The Longevity Diet

A summary of Chapter 9
…
FMD, Nutrition, and Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Treatment

Dear Rookie

When I was a kid…

In the 1950s the thing adults most feared was a heart attack or stroke. With good reason. It could came out of thin air and strike people in their prime.

One Sunday morning the man sitting in the row behind me at church died. He'd seemed fine a few minutes before. He just appeared to fall asleep while my dad, the minister, talked on.

And my 'Uncle John' had a father who had died of a heart attack when he was 50. When Uncle John turned 50 he died, too. He just dropped dead one day, apparently fit and in the midst of a busy life. A full time job. Organist and choir master. Home handyman. Father. Soccer coach. He ran everywhere. 'Hopefully it won't happen to me,' he had said. But it did.

And it wasn't only men who were struck down in their prime.

What's different 70 years late?

We can now pick up the warning signs for cardiovascular disease often decades before an otherwise 'out of the blue' event.

Not always of course. The recent deaths of Shane Warne and Senator Kimberley Kitching, both of a suspected heart attack at age 52, has pulled many of us up in our tracks.

But in the 2020s medical science has a pretty good idea of how to treat cardiovascular disease once it has been diagnosed: medication to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, advice about diet and exercise – and surgical interventions that once would have seemed like science fiction.

Advice about diet and exercise is one thing.

Life long adherence to the advice is another.

Which leads to two questions:

1. How do I do it?
2. And is it possible to prevent cardiovascular disease in the first place?

There are thousands of books, programs, Youtube videos, Ted talks that attempt to answer these questions.

But we have one concern today:

What, practically, can we learn and act on from chapter 9 of Dr Valter Longo's book?

I needed to read this chapter twice to get the full context and to better understand the science behind it. I won't repeat it word for word, except for this direct quote:

PREVENTION [OF CVD]

1. Follow the Longevity Diet and the exercise guidelines.
2. Undergo periodic fasting-mimicking diets. For very healthy individuals with no cardiovascular-disease risk factors, we recommend FMD once every six months. For those overweight with multiple risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, including a family history of heart disease or stroke, we recommend FMD once a month until normal weight is achieved, then it can be reduced according to the guidelines in chapter 6.

And this high level summary:

TREATMENT [OF CVD]

• Talk with your cardiologist.
• Consider a pescatarian diet (vegan + fish).
• Consume 80 grams of olive oil a day.
• Limit eating to within a period of 11–12 hours per 24.
• Eat twice during that time plus a low sugar, high fibre snack.
• Limit sugar to less than 10 grams a day (about two teaspoons).
• Exercise.
• Undertake an FMD (ProLon) periodically.

TAKE HOME MESSAGE

• Eat well.
• Exercise well.
• Undertake an FMD regularly, according to your circumstances, and at least twice a year.

And remember:

Dr Longo receives zero dollars from ProLon. He invented it to save lives and improve your health. I'm glad he did.

Best wishes…

Peter Jerrim
LifeX Australia