Fasting-mimicking diets: Medical therapy or anti-aging hack?

882. Someone in your office comes back from vacation with a box of soups and shakes and announces they're doing a five-day fast. Except they're eating.

Fasting-mimicking diets are unusual among viral wellness protocols in that there is a real body of peer-reviewed research behind them. There is also a company selling the five-day kits, founded by the researcher who developed the protocol and funding many of the trials. Both of those things are true at the same time.

In this episode, Monica breaks down what the research actually shows:

• What the five-day protocol involves, including the calorie targets and why it's deliberately low in protein
• What "fasting mimicking" means, and which effects of a multi-day fast it's trying to reproduce
• The 2017 trial in 100 healthy adults, where participants lost about five and a half pounds over three months but saw no change in blood sugar, cholesterol, blood pressure, or inflammation
• Why the subgroup findings are interesting and why they aren't proof
• The 12-month trial in people with type 2 diabetes, where 40% reduced their diabetes medication compared with 5% in usual care
• What the cancer research has shown in mice, what it hasn't yet shown in people, and why anyone in treatment needs their oncology team in the conversation first
• Why the claim that five days can make you two and a half years biologically younger is the weakest part of the evidence, and what happened to the third of participants whose scores got worse
• Whether you can replicate the protocol without buying a branded kit, and what you might be giving up if you do
• What the dropout rates in these studies say about how doable this really is

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