Watch the full podcast episode including my interview with Dr. Joseph Antoun:
Ever feel like you're aging faster than your birth certificate suggests? You're not alone. While millions of us are diligently following intermittent fasting protocols and skipping breakfast, we might be missing the bigger picture entirely.
I recently sat down with Dr. Joseph Antoun, CEO of L-Nutra Health, who dropped a bombshell about aging that changed everything I thought I knew about fasting and longevity.
The Mother of All Diseases
"Aging is the mother of disease," Dr. Antoun explained, leaning forward in his chair. "90 percent of us will die out of four diseases - Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. And guess what? They all happen at later stage in life."
This isn't just another health theory. It's a paradigm shift in how we think about preventing disease.
Your Body's True Age
Here's where it gets interesting. That number on your driver's license? It might be lying to you about your real age.
"When you meet somebody, you ask them, how old are you? They're giving you their chronological age," Dr. Antoun explained. "If you're 45, but inside, if you have lived a not-so-healthy lifestyle, if you have high inflammation rates, if you're stressing a lot, you're not sleeping well, you might be 55 on the inside."
The Five Pillars of Aging Slowly
According to Dr. Antoun, there are five key ways to slow down your biological clock:
Nutrition and fasting
Exercise
Stress management
Sleep
Social capital
The Surprising Social Connection
Perhaps the most unexpected revelation was about social connections. "Social capital turns out to be probably neck to neck with nutrition, the top two most important factors," Dr. Antoun revealed.
He shared fascinating stories about centenarians - people living past 100 - who sometimes smoked or ate less-than-ideal diets but maintained strong social connections and remained happy.
Fasting for Longevity—The Three-Day Game Changer
Now, here's the breakthrough that earned a Nobel Prize in Medicine: true cellular rejuvenation only begins after day three of fasting.
"A lot of people thought that if you do intermittent fasting and you skip breakfast, you're getting into autophagy and rejuvenation," Dr. Antoun explained. "Well, you have still a lot of reserves in the body to break before you get into the crisis. The crisis only happened at day three onwards."
Think of your body like a company facing financial hardship:
Day 1: Uses checking account (glycogen)
Day 2: Taps into savings (fat)
Day 3: Finally restructures for efficiency (cellular rejuvenation)
The Modern Solution
But who wants to fast for three days? That's where Dr. Antoun's team spent 12 years and $48 million developing a solution: the fasting-mimicking diet.
"Can we feed the body but feed it in a special formulation that gives you the benefits of fasting?" he posed. The result was ProLon, a five-day nutrition program that tricks your cells into thinking you're fasting while still allowing you to eat.
The Results Are In
The impact? Three five-day cycles per year (just 15 days total) can reduce your biological age by 2.5 years.
Over 20 years, that could mean being 11 years younger biologically than your chronological age.
What to Expect
During the five-day program:
Day 1: 1,100 calories
Days 2-5: 800 calories
Weight loss: 5-6 pounds for women, 7-9 pounds for men
Muscle preservation (unlike traditional diets)
Increased energy and mental clarity
Key Takeaways:
The Critical 3-Day Threshold: True cellular rejuvenation only begins after three full days of fasting, making short-term intermittent fasting less effective for longevity.
The Five Pillars of Biological Age Management: Success comes from managing nutrition/fasting, exercise, stress, sleep, and social connections - with social capital being surprisingly crucial.
Strategic Fasting Impact: Just three 5-day fasting-mimicking periods per year can significantly reduce your biological age, offering a practical approach to longevity that doesn't require extreme measures.
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