Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

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Tincup
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

Post by Tincup »

Julie G wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:06 pm I like the idea of designing our own study.
Wonder if you could ask Longo what metrics he plans to study?
Brian4 wrote: Wed Mar 23, 2022 10:50 pm We could absolutely whip up our own study arm, or even whole study!

IGF-1 is a sensible marker. I was wondering whether he was thinking of doing cognitive testing, or even imaging studies.
My guess is he will study the markers he's previously studied. I bet our arm (taken from our group here) would have much better values than the ending values of his study participants. If folks that are doing what me, my wife, Julie and some others are doing and went on Longo's program (the diet plus the FMD), I'd be willing to bet you'd see regression in the values (though I doubt you'd have many, if any takers). It would be interesting to see what would happen to a group like this if they introduce a FMD with Gundry's structure. Based on what has been reported in the Gundry groups, I think we'd blow the people on Longo's program out of the water with the after values.

However, if you applied Longo's approach to a bunch of people on a SAD diet, you'd probably see great improvement.
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

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Tincup wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:41 pm
circular wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 2:22 pm To Tincup's good suggestion that I read his book, unfortunately I'm a slow reader and don't have time to fit books in. If he comes out with an audiobook I can listen while getting other things done.
The-Longevity-Diet-Audiobook,Audible
Thanks Tincup! Sorry to have troubled you again. When I followed the link on my phone it brought me to this Amazon page and I must have been going too fast, because I saw 0.00 and thought it meant there wasn't an audiobook :roll: What's worse is I just went to that page on my computer, where I'm logged in at Amazon, and I already bought the kindle version in 2018 :lol: That was the year at started my serial caregiving spree so I'd forgotten all about it. Since I already have it I'll try to do some homework and get my money's worth.
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

Post by Bonita52 »

Thanks for sharing this possible opportunity with this community. I am 4/4, 70 year old woman, without cognitive decline issues at this point, and following a high vegetable, very low saturated fat, diet to stay at a low, but consistent state of ketosis, measured with Biosense. Unfortunately, all of my cholesterol levels have gone sky-high despite a diet that does not include meat, dairy, and eggs, and only small portions of SMASH fish several times a week. I also have an eating window of 2-4 hours daily.
Because of my high LDL-P (>3500) and high sm-LDL-P (889) I am questioning my high monounsaturated /polyunsaturated diet of avocados, olives, olive oil, nuts, and seeds.
I am currently a patient of Dr. Ann Hathaway, and started the Bredesen protocol in 2018 after reading Dr. Bredesen's first book, at about the same time I discovered my APOE 4/4 status.
I have also been attracted to Valter Longo's work and am drawn to experimenting with a diet with lower fat content, mostly vegetarian. I have done several FMD fasts over the past years and had good results. Bouncing back into ketosis within a day or two after the fasts.
I have been following this website since 2017 and have learned so much. I'm very grateful to Julie and all those who have worked so hard to make this a real support for APOE 4 carriers.
Bottom line, I am very interested in following this discussion and potentially participating in his study.
Thank you.
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

Post by Brian4 »

Tincup wrote: Mon Mar 21, 2022 5:08 pm For a much better idea of Longo's thoughts, suggest reading his book.
And don't accidentally buy the other, older book called The Longevity Diet. It's way out of date! Trust me, I know. :lol:
ε4/ε4 (for now).
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

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Bonita52 wrote: Thu Mar 24, 2022 4:56 pm
I have been following this website since 2017 and have learned so much. I'm very grateful to Julie and all those who have worked so hard to make this a real support for APOE 4 carriers.
Bottom line, I am very interested in following this discussion and potentially participating in his study.
Thank you.
Hi Bonita52 -

I am a new intern on the ApoE4.info Support Team and I love hearing that this site as been such a great resource for you! Thank you for sharing some of your background with us, including your experience with the Bredesen protocol and FMD fasts. I sense that you have a love of learning and have persevered in adopting lifestyle changes to support your health since 2018. It's wonderful to hear that you are doing well!

JulieG will be following this thread and will be in touch with you if there is enough interest in the study that Dr. Longo has proposed.

Warmly,
Theresa
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

Post by Julie G »

I was thinking the lack of e4s in Blue Zones was because those subpopulations didn't happen to have a high frequency of e4s, rather than that what e4s they may include didn't live as long with the Blue Zone lifestyle. Maybe I mistook that.
Not sure that's true across the board. In Japan, for instance, the prevalence of ApoE4 is 18.3%. That said, we do see more E4 carriers in hunter/gather populations from which we originally descended. To my knowledge, none have been deemed Blue Zones, but the Tsimane have been characterized as being surprising free from disease (CAD & AD) despite high levels of inflammation from parasites, infections, etc.
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

Post by Tincup »

Longo just put out a review paper.

For more background, here are two podcasts Longo did with Rhonda Patrick
One and
Two
(in both of these, he talks about the markers he looks at.
and his and his book that includes a lot of info on FMD .

On what is in his FMD, this is from Longo's patent for treating T2 diabetes with FMD. Note the calories are scaled to body weight.
FMD 1 (5 days): a low protein and low carbohydrate diet containing no or minimal animal derived components. The diet provides 7 kcal/pound of body weight for day 1 followed by 4 kcal/pound of body weight/day for days 2-5. At least 60% of calories are from a composition of fatty acids, preferably 100% from plant sources (with 50% or more coming from coconut oil and nuts including macadamia, walnuts, almonds), glycerol (2-5% of kcal) and 5% of calories from plant-based proteins (soy, rice, other grains)+a maximum of 35% of calories from carbohydrates mostly complex from plant sources. The diet is also high nourishment and provides, on each day, 30-50% of the daily recommended intake for all vitamins and minerals+essential fatty acids, with at least 50% of them coming from natural sources.

In Steven Gundry's Paradox books (Plant, Energy, Longevity, Keto Code) books , he describes how to DIY an FMD.

Of course, one can just water fast. One note from Longo's presentations is that the refeeding is very important. The fasting or FMD shrinks body organs, while refeeding rebuilds them as new. Also, he's done work with fasting/FMD for cancer patients undergoing chemo with good efficacy. However, he notes you should wait until the chemo is completely out of your system (24-48 hours) before eating high protein (especially animal) meals.

A note to @ Julie G
Julie G wrote:
In the first podcast, Longo talks about a study on MS where they tested rounds of FMD in one arm, 7 days FMD followed by Mediterranean diet for 6 months and the last arm was keto for 6 months. The 7 day FMD followed by Mediterranean diet beat the keto diet. This may explain his antipathy towards keto. Also that none of the Blue Zone diets were keto. He did mention using keto interspersed by FMD for cancer being explored by a group in AZ.
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

Post by Jan18 »

Tincup wrote: Sat Apr 30, 2022 7:32 am
A note to @ Julie G
Julie G wrote:
In the first podcast, Longo talks about a study on MS where they tested rounds of FMD in one arm, 7 days FMD followed by Mediterranean diet for 6 months and the last arm was keto for 6 months. The 7 day FMD followed by Mediterranean diet beat the keto diet. This may explain his antipathy towards keto. Also that none of the Blue Zone diets were keto. He did mention using keto interspersed by FMD for cancer being explored by a group in AZ.
I find this extremely interesting. I've read and reread the Blue Zones and was always in the back of my mind questioning keto v. Blue Zones, since the two things all the Blue Zones had in common were greens and beans. Yet beans are a huge no-no with keto.

In addition, the Ikarians eat goat and sheep cheeses. But we were warned off dairy. So imagine my light-bulb reaction when Gundry's new book said that those cheeses promote ketones!

(They also eat pita bread and sourdough bread, yet all along we were told no bread. Of course, the way the U.S. produces bread versus the stuff they eat in Greece seem to differ largely by way of the preservative Gundry talks about. He also gave examples of people who ate the French bread and had no issues with it like they did back home in the US.)

To me, it's looking like the Blue Zones diet (at least Ikaria's) seems to promote uncoupling and that's key to the longevity associated with it. In fact, doesn't he say uncoupling is the key to weight loss? (I could recheck this in the book, but my neighbor has it right now....)
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

Post by mike »

IMHO a lot of this dietary stuff misses the point here - I'm unique. If nothing else, my 4/4 status puts me into a pretty small group. Not to mention all the other genes that come into play. No one diet is going to work for everyone. Some folks do not do well on wheat, or dairy, or whatever. I believe E3 was a response to farming and fast carbs. If you look at fossil evidence, it looks like E3 spread out from the middle east. E4 remained in areas where farming was less possible during the end of the Ice Age - where meat/animal fat made up a larger part of the diet, and fast carbs much less so. For some folks, a Keto diet makes sense, for others not. For me, with a broken insulin response, I have little choice but to go very low carb. If you are 3/3 or even 3/4 and careful, then more carbs can work, as long as you are able to bring your BG down soon after eating them. If not, then lower your carbs. If I were 4/4, I would try to go as keto as possible. Glucose requires more oxygen than ketones to get a given amount of energy (ATP), and I'm thinking that this could be causing proteins to bend incorrectly, impairing function.
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Re: Gauging Interest in a Trial with Valter Longo, PhD

Post by Naposghost »

Hi Julie,
I've reconsidered and would like to participate in Dr. Longo's trial. Has this moved forward? I am 4/4. My preference would be to do the pescetarian option which I've tried. A question for Dr. Longo would be whether we can add EVOO since his approach is low fat.
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