With all the advances we’re seeing in technology, extending our life span has never seemed more achievable than it is today. I’ve even spoken to some guests here on The School of Greatness who believe we’re closer to living to 200 years than we all might think we are!
And that’s all great, but what are some ways we can start increasing our life spans NOW? What steps can we take today that will pay dividends in the long run to improve the probability we live longer? One colossal way is through our diet. By eating the foods that work with our bodies and not against them as so many processed foods do, we’re able to improve the odds of a longer, healthier life.
My guest today is a leader in the field of nutrition and dieting. His name is Dr. Valter Longo, and he’s dedicated his career to finding ways to unlock our life longevity through our diets. In this episode, we dive deep into the leading causes of our death and the longevity diet. We also talked about the five pillars of longevity and the many variables to improve our lifespan.
This is a fascinating discussion, and you’re going to love the information he shares! I’m so excited to start this one with you all.
Who Is Dr. Valter Longo?
Valter Longo, Ph.D., has thirty years of experience in longevity and healthy eating. He is the Director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Los Angeles, and the Director of the Longevity and Cancer Program at the IFOM, the Italian Foundation for Cancer Research (FIRC) Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, Italy.
He is also the author of the best-seller The Longevity Diet and the Italian books Alla Tavola Della longevità (“At the Table of Longevity,”) and La longevità inizia da Bambini (“Longevity Begins in Childhood”). Professor Longo is also the Scientific Director of the Create Cures Foundation and the Valter Longo Foundation. In 2018, TIME magazine named him as one of the 50 most influential people in health care for his research on fasting-mimicking diets as a way to improve health and prevent disease.
His contribution to the understanding of life’s longevity has been truly outstanding. I hope you’ll find the wisdom he’ll share as valuable and exciting as I did!
What Kills Us and How?
Many of us would say that health is a choice. So to get to a genuinely long-lasting lifestyle, we have to understand the things that can kill us so we can make healthier choices. I recently learned this statistic: Between 150,000 and 180,000 people worldwide die every day. I’m not sure how accurate that is, but it made me curious about the leading cause of people dying earlier than they should be dying. Dr. Longo’s experience in science points us to the answer.
“There are lots of causes, and they’re different based on the parts of the world. Lots of people die from malnourishment, but now more people die of too much and too much food and obesity.” – Dr. Valter Longo
Having a better understanding of the leading causes of people’s early death is essential because it gives us insight into why we need proper nutrition. Also, it allows us to find possible solutions to help a more significant percentage of people achieve a longer, healthier life. According to Dr. Longo, some studies can help us understand how to live a longer life.
“Dr. Roy Walford worked with microorganisms and made them live ten times longer just by mutation plus fasting. He eventually developed this into something called calorie restriction. This happens if you take a normal diet and reduce it by 25%. … Then one of his students, Richard Weindruch, did a study in monkeys to see the effects of calorie restriction. He found out that if you give them the same identical food, but 25% less, they go from 60% diabetic or insulin-resistant to 5%, and cancer is reduced by 50%.” – Dr. Valter Longo
These studies show that fasting and calorie restriction might reverse cancer and diabetes. Though it might sound that we’ve already found the solution to living a long and healthy life. There’s more that we need to know to put all of these pieces together and truly live longer and healthier lives.
What Is the Longevity Diet?
Dr. Longo is known for his contribution to “the longevity diet.” To truly understand what the longevity diet is, he explains,
“The longevity diet is undoubtedly the one diet that can help many people lose weight and eat more. It means lots of vegetables, legumes, nourishment, and fish a few times a week. … The responses differ — some people can burn more, some can burn less. … It’s really a matter of watching your abdominal circumference, your weight, your muscle mass.” – Dr. Valter Longo
Protein intake levels are also a common question with this style of diet, but Dr. Longo says you need to have a low protein amount but at a sufficient level. In addition, he spoke of the five pillars that serve as the foundation of this diet. He discussed them in detail in his book, but an overview of them is below.
#1: Epidemiological studies
Epidemiological studies are studies of causes and risk factors for disease in certain populations. Dr. Longo utilized research on illnesses like cancer and diabetes in centenarians to understand longevity better.
#2: Clinical studies
These studies are conducted through randomized clinical trials to test various hypotheses from other studies (pillars). As Dr. Longo explains, a good example is when you identify that too much protein is terrible for you — you do a randomized trial and see its effects on people.
#3: Basic research
Basic research is conducted to develop theories, hypotheses, and predictions. In coming up with the Longevity diet, Dr. Longo utilized findings from the foundational studies conducted by Dr. Walford and Weindruch on calorie restriction and its effects on illnesses like cancer and diabetes.
#4: Centenarian studies
These are studies conducted on people 100 years old or older. Dr. Longo examined the life of Emma Morano, research on the Okinawans of Japan, and the study in Loma Linda to come up with other factors that can lengthen one’s life. These include learning that manual labor and exercise are keys to living a longer life and reversing aging.
#5: Complex system studies
These studies complement the four previous pillars by providing reference points and useful analogies. Dr. Longo uses them as he thinks of human beings as a plane or a car. If you drive your car all the time, it’s going to break apart. Though he sees that the body has self-repair mechanisms, if it’s overused, it’s going to break down. The knowledge he learned from these studies is useful when it comes to discussing other variables such as using drugs and skipping breakfast that may affect a person’s lifespan.
The information learned from these combined pillars helped Dr. Longo discover so much about how to live longer and healthier lives. This led him to the development of the Longevity Diet, which is just the beginning of his work. That’s because he truly believes we can all do so much better than we’re doing now.
