To start off I, want you to know that the Fasting Mimicking Diet is an incredible breakthrough for many things. Valter Longo and his team are doing some great work. But, in a recent publication of a 12-month study, the results were not stellar. They were good, and promising, but not life-changing. The results showed good treatment of diabetes, with some people able to get off their medication. In this article I will show you where the fasting mimicking diet didn’t work, why, and how to make the fasting mimicking diet better, so that you can end your diabetes now.
I like the quote, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” This is the problem with many people working with diabetes. They don’t know what is the cause of diabetes and thus, they don’t know, really, what it will take to reverse diabetes. Many doctors don’t even think that you can reverse diabetes. They think it is just a life-long chronic disease that must be managed, balancing the medications to minimize side effects and hope to stave off the awful complications of runaway glucose control or heavy use of insulin.
The Cause of Diabetes
Here on this website we have trumpeted the work of Professor Roy Taylor and revealed the cause of diabetes—the accumulation of too much fat in the liver and pancreas, which interferes with their metabolic function of controlling blood sugar. You can read more about the details of the cause of diabetes here. The way to reverse diabetes is to lose substantial weight, like around 35 pounds.
For people who seem to be normal size and still have diabetes, it has been shown that they also have too much fat in their liver and pancreas. If they lose weight they can lose their diabetes, too. See this article about the ReTune study by Professor Roy Taylor and colleagues that settled this nagging question.
So, if you get substantial weight loss, you can reverse diabetes. It is as simple as that. And if your study doesn’t result in substantial weight loss, people will not get free of their diabetes. It is really that simple.
But if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve, you certainly won’t have great success.
What is the Fasting Mimicking Diet?
The concept of the fasting mimicking diet is that if you use a diet of around 700-800 calories and select mostly fats, low protein, and a little carbohydrate intake you can induce ketosis and get the same results as if you were water fasting. Water fasting is hard to do for many people to do while taking medications, but the FMD allows more people to get the results of water fasting without the pain. The degree of deprivation and discomfort is a lot less.
Intermittent fasting does not get you the same results as the FMD because it takes a full 2 days to enter the ketosis state where autophagy really kicks in and starts cellular regeneration. When the food pipeline is cut off, the body seeks out other sources for energy and building blocks for its own upkeep. The scientific name for this is autophagy, which literally means “self eating.” Autophagy eliminates damaged, weak, poorly functioning organelles within cells and even eliminates compromised cells and recycles the materials into making fully functioning organelles and energy. This is half of the beauty of the FMD.
The other half of the strength of the FMD is the release of stem cells that occurs when you begin eating again. During fasting your organs can actually decrease in size. When you resume eating they grow back to their previous size. The growth comes from newly released stem cells. So you end up with healthier organs every time you do the 5-day FMD.
Design of the FMD Diabetes Study
So, here is what the researchers did in this study. In the Netherlands they worked with general practitioner doctors and found and qualified 100 people with diabetes (I don’t like calling them diabetics because they should not see their identity in their disease.) The people with diabetes had only used diet and metformin to control their diabetes. So, they were not too far down the pathway of diabetes medication and destruction. They mostly had high blood pressure (average of 140/84) and were obese (average BMI 31 kg/m2 as well.
The control group got usual care from their doctors. The intervention group used the fasting mimicking diet created by Valter Longo and produced by Prolon to do 5 days of fasting every month for 12 months.
Prolon is a company that makes the 5-day packaged food program that is the official fasting mimicking diet made by Valter Longo and his team. The money from the diet program gets put back into more research. Over 32 human clinical studies have now been conducted on the fasting mimicking diet with lots more in the pipeline.
Results of the FMD Diabetes Study
The main variables tested were HbA1c for glucose control and medication use. They looked at cholesterol levels, blood pressure, CRP levels, and anthropometric measurements. Not a lot of fancy testing was done, nor was a lot needed. You can tell really easily if someone loses weight, has lower fasting glucose levels, or has a lower oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) result.
What Got Better During the FMD Study
After 6 months and 12 months the results were better in the FMD group. They lost weight (-3.6 kg (-7.9 lb) average), smaller waist circumference, lower BMI (-1.3 kg/m2). Their medication use was lower as a group, while the control group had to use more medications. Their glucose control, even taking medications into account, was better than the control group as seen in their HbA1c improvements.
What Didn’t Change During the Study
What didn’t change? Well, fasting blood glucose, fasting insulin, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels for starters. There was no significant change in system inflammation either, as measured by high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP). Generally, the FMD looked like a good treatment, but compared to what is possible? Not great. Not even very good.
While it is true that these were secondary outcomes in the study, they are nevertheless important indicators of health. If the fasting blood glucose didn’t go down significantly, then the liver is basically as clogged with fat as it was in the beginning of the study. Even though there was some weight loss, cholesterol numbers stayed the same, and hypertension was about the same. There wasn’t a real change of diet overall.
So, as treatments for diabetes go, it did put some of the power back into the people’s hands to control their own health destiny. That was good. And maybe after the study was over some of them wanted to make more significant changes and really lose weight and reverse their diabetes.
So, the problem with the FMD was that it did not cause a great enough change in the people. They needed to lose more weight. They needed more radical changes. In this case moderation gave false hope.
How to Make the Fasting Mimicking Diet Better for Diabetes
Like I said in the beginning, there are a lot of benefits to the FMD. It is a breakthrough in many ways. The main benefits of the FMD are not weight loss, but the removal of weak, dysfunctional organelles and cells by autophagy, and the regeneration of your organs by stem cells released when you begin eating again. FMD is a bit of DIY stem cell therapy for your whole body. And that is good for your overall health.
The main benefit of the FMD is cellular regeneration. Weight loss is a secondary effect. This means that if you don’t need to lose weight you can also use the FMD with great benefit.
To get the most out of the cycles of the Fasting Mimicking Diet you need to change your diet between fasting days as well.
To make it work for you, you need to make dietary changes between the fasting days as well. You can’t just keep on eating the way you have been eating. You have to eat like someone who is three-quarters of your current size. And that person you are becoming doesn’t need so much food. The FMD is great, but it isn’t enough to reverse diabetes by itself. You have to go further and make the fasting mimicking diet better for diabetes.
What You Need to Do to End Diabetes Now
First, you need to know what your goal is. In this study the participants didn’t know that they had to lose 35 pounds to reverse their diabetes. Their doctors didn’t kow and still probably don’t know that.
So, that is why this website exists. You need to know the truth, the raw, bare, unvarnished truth about diabetes. No beating around the bush here. No fancy diets for months on end with some hope of getting a little better. Months of restrictive diets with very few results is very discouraging.
No, you just need to lose weight and keep it lost. Lose it someplace and don’t go back to find where you lost it. Treat it like an old rusty toy that doesn’t work anymore. Just lose it, it doesn’t matter where, nor how. Just lose it.
And that is the way you need to look at diabetes. I am here to help provide accountability. I can help you get started and get going on the right track and help you stay on the right track. You have to focus attention on this problem to gain the victory.
So, if you want more help, reach out. I am not an expert in medicine. I study health, not medicine. So, I can’t help you wean off your medicines. But I do know where you need to get to, which is saying a lot more than what all the diabetic “experts” know out there. I have great expertise in choosing healthy foods and choosing supplements that really help.
Mostly, you just need to find a way to lose weight, to be accountable so you can reach your goals. And you can reverse your diabetes. You can end diabetes now where it really matters—in yourself.