Speaker 1: Adding the liquid to the bottle. I have a little
Speaker 1: bit more to do. Um, and I'm somewhere between one. Oh,
Speaker 1: I went over a little bit, but that's okay. This
Speaker 1: is me on a recent morning. I'm with the show's
Speaker 1: co host, Hockey. I was on day three of this
Speaker 1: five day diet that mimics the effects of fasting. It
Speaker 1: sounds like you're filling up a water bottle. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was mixing up this drink that's supposed to give you
Speaker 1: some of the nutrients your body needs, but without loading
Speaker 1: you up on a bunch of calories. So this is
Speaker 1: instead of having a real breakfast. Now you get to
Speaker 1: have breakfast too. They feed you these breakfast bars and
Speaker 1: they're actually pretty tasty nuts, honey, coconut. But yes, far
Speaker 1: fewer calories than you would expect. It's not gonna kill me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go for it. What does it smell like, No, it's
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's like this. It smells like a cherry
Speaker 1: Nike will would is not a bad thing. Over the
Speaker 1: last five months or so, I've tried all kinds of fasts,
Speaker 1: thirty six hours, three day, five day fast that mimic
Speaker 1: the effects of a fast. Yeah, time I've watched it
Speaker 1: with equal amounts of admiration, horror, and the concern of
Speaker 1: a Jewish parent, as has just about everyone else around me.
Speaker 1: So I've heard about the Silicon Valley obsession with fasting.
Speaker 1: Is it just about losing weight? For some people, it's
Speaker 1: about wanting to lose weight and be healthier. For other people,
Speaker 1: it's a productivity hack to work faster, to focus better.
Speaker 1: And what about you? What made you want to try it?
Speaker 1: I definitely wanted to see if I could get those
Speaker 1: benefits too. There was also a religious component to it.
Speaker 1: This fell during Lent, when a lot of people fast,
Speaker 1: but as a tech journalist, I was just curious. Fasting
Speaker 1: has become this huge trend in text circles, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to understand why. So I joined forces with our
Speaker 1: colleagues Selina Wang to help with additional report name. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Brad Stone, I'm Tom Giles, and I'm Selena Wayne.
Speaker 1: And this week on Decrypted, we're taking a look at
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley's latest obsession, intermittent fasting, from young entrepreneurs to
Speaker 1: establish executives. Fasting has become a fixture in the tech community,
Speaker 1: and like a lot of other fads that catch on
Speaker 1: in Silicon Valley. All kinds of startups are emerging to
Speaker 1: make a business out of it. So today you're gonna
Speaker 1: be meeting some of these enthusiasts and businesses and we'll
Speaker 1: be asking are the supposed benefits real or is this
Speaker 1: under indulgence simply another form of over indulgence here in
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley? Stay with us. So people have been fasting
Speaker 1: since time immemorial, but the kind of fast thing we're
Speaker 1: talking about today is pretty specific, that's right. And there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different iterations of it, every thing
Speaker 1: from skipping a few meals a few times a week
Speaker 1: to these water only fast that go on for days.
Speaker 1: Of course, before I started any of them, I went
Speaker 1: to see my doctor to talk about it. And what
Speaker 1: did your doctor say? My doctor had no reservations. His take,
Speaker 1: go for it. I started small. I did twenty hour
Speaker 1: fast three days a week. You're essentially skipping breakfast and
Speaker 1: lunch and confining your eating window to about four hours
Speaker 1: in the afternoon evening. It's known as the Warrior fast
Speaker 1: for the good stress it puts on your body. Okay,
Speaker 1: and how did that go for you? Well, in the beginning,
Speaker 1: I'd get really hungry on my fasting days, and i'd
Speaker 1: get a little testy in the afternoons. Let me read
Speaker 1: you a journal entry from about three weeks in. I
Speaker 1: am so damn hungry, counting the hours until I can
Speaker 1: start eating again. Someone a few rows over was eating
Speaker 1: an onion begel and I couldn't see it, but I
Speaker 1: could recognize the aroma instantly. That sounds pretty dark. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that we were counting you whether afternoons next.
Speaker 1: I also tried fasting for thirty six hours at a time,
Speaker 1: but I really gravitated towards an approach that would let
Speaker 1: me have dinner with my family each night. But I
Speaker 1: also remember you going on some longer fasts right. One
Speaker 1: especially intense one was a three day water only. Okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds very brutal. I recorded a voice diary for
Speaker 1: that one. I definitely feel hunger. It's clear to me
Speaker 1: that I was thinking about food as I slept last night,
Speaker 1: because I remembered a dream where I was at a
Speaker 1: gathering and there were piles of bread and a mountain
Speaker 1: of garlic bread, and then there were stacks of Pizzas.
Speaker 1: My wife is out of pocket, and so it's my
Speaker 1: turn to do dinner tonight, and I will definitely be tempted,
Speaker 1: but I am confident I will resist, and I might
Speaker 1: even go downstairs and have a little bit of a
Speaker 1: workout in our home, Jim. Right now, I am feeling
Speaker 1: very focused, very energetic. I had a very productive day.
Speaker 1: You know, you actually sound surprisingly upbeat. You know, I
Speaker 1: got used to it. Probably the hardest one I did
Speaker 1: was a five day fast that you heard me try
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, of the one where
Speaker 1: you were allowed a very limited number of calories. That's right.
Speaker 1: You get about eleven calories on the first day and
Speaker 1: then eight hundred on each of the four following days.
Speaker 1: You can't work out on this one, and by days
Speaker 1: four and five I was feeling especially tired. I also
Speaker 1: just missed the variety of a normal diet. As I
Speaker 1: tried more of these fasts, Selena and I went to
Speaker 1: go meet someone who's had a lot of success with it. Hi, Hie.
Speaker 1: This is Sumaya Kazi today. She has this kind of
Speaker 1: cult status within the fasting community ever since she wrote
Speaker 1: this medium post about her fasting lifestyle that went viral
Speaker 1: just a few years ago. Samaya was running a start
Speaker 1: up and she was pulling long days and nights, just
Speaker 1: like a lot of other entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. At
Speaker 1: a certain point, she really reached her breaking point. Seven
Speaker 1: years of building a company is probably the worst thing
Speaker 1: you can do for your health. It is so difficult
Speaker 1: on your body, with the stress, the lack of sleep,
Speaker 1: the late nights, the eating bat I had high blood pressure,
Speaker 1: I had issues with sleep apnea, I was pre diabetic,
Speaker 1: and I was obese. She tried exercising, she tried all
Speaker 1: kinds of diets, but the thing that finally worked for
Speaker 1: her was fasting. She's lost fifty pounds, ten point five
Speaker 1: percent body fat, and forty around her body, and she's
Speaker 1: kept it up. I fast Monday's, Wednesday's, Friday's, I have
Speaker 1: coffee of water, sparkling water, have tea, I go to bed.
Speaker 1: It's actually such a relief to not have to think
Speaker 1: about your next meal half the week. Over the years,
Speaker 1: she's seen a lot of other people take up fasting too.
Speaker 1: There's been such a cultural shift, at least in my
Speaker 1: own community, where more people are fasting than not. Throughout
Speaker 1: our reporting process, one of the big questions I've had
Speaker 1: is why is this so appealing to people? In Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: We asked, Sumya, I feel like that's really appealing in
Speaker 1: the Silicon Valley and startup community, because again, you're working
Speaker 1: really really long days, and anything that can help you
Speaker 1: be feel more productive, more focused, UM, reduced your decision
Speaker 1: making that you need to do UM and make you
Speaker 1: feel good is something that people kind of strive for
Speaker 1: in this community. So did so MAYA have any tips
Speaker 1: for you? Tom? I gotta say her story is pretty inspiring,
Speaker 1: and it's really no wonder that she's gotten her colleagues
Speaker 1: and friends and family to take up fasting. So from her,
Speaker 1: I adopted her three times a week approach, even though
Speaker 1: I'm nowhere near as hardcore. A lot of fasters also
Speaker 1: call themselves bio hackers. They think of themselves as hacking
Speaker 1: their own biology. I visited an entrepreneur in his thirties
Speaker 1: here in the Bay Area who takes this a lot
Speaker 1: further than someone like Sumaya. He takes it to the
Speaker 1: very extreme, taking all of these pills every morning. And
Speaker 1: then those went about those pills. I take them every
Speaker 1: morning as well, so I just measure them out more
Speaker 1: carefully because this is search forgett He's an intermittent faster too.
Speaker 1: He typically eats only one meal a day in the
Speaker 1: later afternoon, but he actually does a lot more than that.
Speaker 1: He fasts and takes about forty pills a day to
Speaker 1: have what he says is better energy, mood, focus, confidence, sleep, willpower,
Speaker 1: and longevity. Okay, alright, one last round, one more handful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. So some of the pill search takes
Speaker 1: our things. You and I might take vitamins and supplements
Speaker 1: that are over the counter, like fish oil, garlic, and tumeric.
Speaker 1: But he takes it a step further with prescription meds
Speaker 1: and working with a team of medical experts, including Peter A. Tia,
Speaker 1: a well known doctor in the space. So the stuff
Speaker 1: is this is um, These are basically thyroid hormones. This
Speaker 1: is medaphanel, which is like UM intelligence enhancer that a
Speaker 1: lot of college students use. And I take style prom,
Speaker 1: which is an antidepressant. Wow, this seems very serious. I'm
Speaker 1: glad he has a team of doctors looking over him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was definitely surprised to walk into his bathroom and
Speaker 1: see these prescription meds everywhere. But on top of that,
Speaker 1: he also tracks his blood work, hormones, sugar, levels and
Speaker 1: insulin resistance. Tom, you never went this far right? Oh no,
Speaker 1: nowhere close. I had my blood tested a few times,
Speaker 1: and I tested other things from time to time, but
Speaker 1: nothing quite this quantified search has an interesting philosophy. He
Speaker 1: runs this AI startup called Mirror AI, and he likens
Speaker 1: humans to robots. He says, there's no reason why we
Speaker 1: can't just engineer ourselves to live longer and work better.
Speaker 1: I would just keep asking myself, Okay, what else can
Speaker 1: we do that's safe, that on my medical team will
Speaker 1: help me with, and that will give me more benefits
Speaker 1: in terms of just better cognitive ability, better ability to
Speaker 1: perform my tasks. So originally the started as an interesting
Speaker 1: longevity but now it's more about enhancing my performance, enhancing
Speaker 1: my competitiveness relative to other people. You can really hear
Speaker 1: the engineer's mindset here. It's almost like Serge is testing
Speaker 1: new software or something. Yeah, that's a good way to
Speaker 1: put it. I mean, to most people his regimen will
Speaker 1: sound nuts, but to Sarge, it's a no brainer. So
Speaker 1: look and Valley is um competitive community full of very
Speaker 1: smart people. And when you're a smart person in a
Speaker 1: competitive group of smart people, you keep looking for advance. Interesting.
Speaker 1: You kind of arrive at this conclusion that you know
Speaker 1: your health is a competitive advantage tool. It's really stupid
Speaker 1: not to focus on optimizing your health. It's just you
Speaker 1: instantly become uncompetitive compared with people who do this. Underlying
Speaker 1: all this enthusiasm about fasting is at least some science,
Speaker 1: like the work of Professor Walter Longo. Selena and I
Speaker 1: had the chance to visit his lab at the University
Speaker 1: of Southern California. We walked into this building with several
Speaker 1: large room filled with row after row of mice stacked
Speaker 1: in columns. We started in the hallway. Yes, yes, petive gear,
Speaker 1: protective gear. Is this to protect our bacteria from the right,
Speaker 1: to protect the mice from us? Yeah, exactly, We're not
Speaker 1: going to catch anything. Walter has been researching calorie restriction
Speaker 1: and fasting for decades. They were about more than a
Speaker 1: thousand mice in his lab, and they were all on
Speaker 1: these various fast mimicking diets. The moment we stepped inside,
Speaker 1: we were hit with this waft of a very pungent
Speaker 1: animal smell, like when you walk into a pet store.
Speaker 1: It's all very counterintuitive. The idea that eating less can
Speaker 1: produce more energy and a longer life. So what did
Speaker 1: his research find. It's shown a number of things. First
Speaker 1: that mice on fasting diets live longer and perform better
Speaker 1: at tasks. It's also shown that fasting and mice starves
Speaker 1: cancer cells and helps chemotherapy drugs more effectively kill cancer.
Speaker 1: And a very low calorie diet can slow multiple sclerosis
Speaker 1: by killing off bad cells and generating new ones. Fasting
Speaker 1: exploding the bodies evolved ability to do his job. That's
Speaker 1: extremely powerful, more powerful than almost anything that you can
Speaker 1: imagine in man along. So for maximum anti aging effects
Speaker 1: and cellver generation, Walter advocates for longer but slightly less
Speaker 1: strict fasts. So he's created this company. It's called l Neutra,
Speaker 1: and it's commercialized. This five day diet that he recommends.
Speaker 1: The diets called pro Lawn comes in a box with
Speaker 1: five days of food, everything that you need for that period, soups,
Speaker 1: drink mixes, breakfast bars, even some desserts, but at a
Speaker 1: severely reduced calorie intake. So this is the delicious concoction
Speaker 1: we heard you mixing at the start of the show.
Speaker 1: That's right, and you're consuming so few calories that you
Speaker 1: supposedly get the benefits of fasting, because Walter says it's
Speaker 1: not a good idea. To eat absolutely nothing for five
Speaker 1: days is dangerous because it can cause hypoglycemia, is dangerous
Speaker 1: cause hypotension. For our non doctor listeners, Hypoglycemia is what
Speaker 1: happens when your blood sugar is too low, and extreme cases,
Speaker 1: it can result in confuse, Usian seizures, a loss of consciousness,
Speaker 1: and then hypo tension is overly low blood pressure and
Speaker 1: it can be life threatening. Walter's company is backed by
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in government and private funding. We should
Speaker 1: also note that it costs two dollars for the five
Speaker 1: day regimen. That's a little expensive because you know, eating
Speaker 1: less is pretty inexpensive. Yeah, but if you think about it,
Speaker 1: it's all the food that you need for five days.
Speaker 1: There's also a consultation with the nutritionists in the mix,
Speaker 1: and more than forty five thousand people have subjected themselves
Speaker 1: to this regiment. The company works with thousands of physicians
Speaker 1: that use the meal Plan as a way to treat
Speaker 1: people with metabolic issues related to increased weight, high blood pressure,
Speaker 1: high cholesterol, and insulin resistance. Walter says His science boils
Speaker 1: down to this, you're essentially tricking your body into going
Speaker 1: into starvation mode that breaks down and regenerates the inside
Speaker 1: of cells, killing off and replacing aged one. And of
Speaker 1: course I use always the analogy of a wood burning train, right,
Speaker 1: and so now imagine you running out of fuel. You've
Speaker 1: got to get to the next train station, and the
Speaker 1: engineer starts looking around the train for wood that it
Speaker 1: can burn. Of course, you wouldn't want to take the
Speaker 1: good one. The chairs that are are the walls that
Speaker 1: are in good shape. Take the bad one first, right,
Speaker 1: So take a part of their chairs that are broken, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Use it for a feel. Now the train becomes lighter
Speaker 1: and you eat yourself for a few So that's one
Speaker 1: way to make a business out of fasting, by making
Speaker 1: these kids that help people get the benefits of starvation
Speaker 1: without actually starving to death themselves. Another interesting business model
Speaker 1: is one that a startup called plate Joy is doing.
Speaker 1: The company puts you on these personalized nutrition plans. It's
Speaker 1: CEO is Christina Bognet. We get paid by insurance companies
Speaker 1: when people lose weight, and so as a company we
Speaker 1: had to do a lot of thinking around it. Was
Speaker 1: actually going to help people lose weight, and we know
Speaker 1: that most diets fail and that most people it's very
Speaker 1: hard for most people to lose weight long term. Christina
Speaker 1: herself lost a lot of weight from fasting, and Plajoy
Speaker 1: teaches its pre diabetes customers had fast We suggest is
Speaker 1: that you try sixty hour fasts every day for two weeks,
Speaker 1: see how it goes. Report back. We'll know how it's
Speaker 1: going because we're looking at the data as well. And
Speaker 1: what I love about it is that the results tend
Speaker 1: to be quick. This particular program rolled out at the
Speaker 1: end of February, so we're hearing from people who have said,
Speaker 1: I have not been able to get my weight to budge.
Speaker 1: I'm done seven pounds of two weeks. This is incredible,
Speaker 1: this is life changing. One person said, I could cry
Speaker 1: with gratitude. This is exactly what I needed. So that's interesting.
Speaker 1: One day your insurance provider could even pay you for
Speaker 1: all the weight you've lost. Yeah, you kind of get
Speaker 1: the appeal to an insurance provider given all the health
Speaker 1: problems that are associated with obesity. So I think I'm
Speaker 1: still pretty skeptical about this absolutely. I mean, there is
Speaker 1: still a lot of disagreement in the medical and scientific
Speaker 1: community over the benefits of fasting. For example, Valter Longo
Speaker 1: the scientists says daily fast more than twelve hours can
Speaker 1: lead to an increased risk in golf stone formation. Some
Speaker 1: physicians say there's just not enough data that shows the
Speaker 1: long term effects of fasting methods and humans. They've tested
Speaker 1: it in things like yeast and mice, right, and what
Speaker 1: works for mice might not necessarily be that great for humans.
Speaker 1: And another concern of some doctors is how could this
Speaker 1: potentially lead to another eating disorder or be a precursor
Speaker 1: to one. Okay, so lots of caveats and risks to this,
Speaker 1: even with some promising science. Tom, how did your experience
Speaker 1: turn out well? At the risk of sounding like a fanboy,
Speaker 1: I definitely reaped some positive benefits. First of all, I
Speaker 1: lost about twenty pounds over five months um. I definitely
Speaker 1: saw a reduction in my cholesterol levels. I was able
Speaker 1: to test for catosis, which is basically that stage where
Speaker 1: where your body is using it's fat for energy instead
Speaker 1: of glycogen um. On days of fasting, I really did
Speaker 1: feel like I had higher mental clarity, higher productivity, and
Speaker 1: supposedly this results in stem cell regeneration, but that's a
Speaker 1: lot harder to measure. So, Selena, you tried Walter Longo's
Speaker 1: five day fast? How did that go? So? I'm sort
Speaker 1: of a serial snacker, so it was very difficult for me.
Speaker 1: I almost broke the fast multiple times, but I stuck
Speaker 1: with it. Day three was definitely the worst. It was
Speaker 1: hard for me to focus because I was so hungry. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: day five was the easiest for me. I wasn't that hungry.
Speaker 1: I felt light and sort of energetic, like I could
Speaker 1: go for days without eating. But on the sixth day,
Speaker 1: happily eight. Well, I saw both of you guys doing it,
Speaker 1: and I just have to remark on how much discipline
Speaker 1: it required, and I was admired it quite a bit.
Speaker 1: But why do you guys think that intermittent fasting has
Speaker 1: captured the spirit of Silicon Valley? Why has this trend
Speaker 1: started here? Kevin Rose, for example, the entrepreneur who found
Speaker 1: a dig He talked about how it's part of this
Speaker 1: quantified self movement where people just love to track all
Speaker 1: these all these metrics about themselves. They have these elaborate spreadsheets,
Speaker 1: and it's really sort of this obsession with optimization and
Speaker 1: enhancing her own self competitiveness. Yeah, that reminds me of
Speaker 1: Phil Libbon. We've all read about his story where this
Speaker 1: guy lost sixty pounds over the course of several months
Speaker 1: through intermittent fasting. He's a total true believer. He says
Speaker 1: it makes him happier, more more productive, mentally sharper. He
Speaker 1: talked about how if he's got an important meaning coming up, um,
Speaker 1: he'll try to you know, he'll try to fast for
Speaker 1: two or three days in the run up to it.
Speaker 1: But even he is able to look at this with
Speaker 1: some degree of skepticism. He also says it's kind of
Speaker 1: like appealing to the worst instincts of us in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: people who want to feel smug and SUPERI year to
Speaker 1: everyone else like we found this secret, we found this hack.
Speaker 1: It's also really a luxury, as you said, to be
Speaker 1: able to fast. It's ironically sort of for the elites.
Speaker 1: Version of over indulging is not indulging at all. And
Speaker 1: when I spoke to Sarah, she was very open about it.
Speaker 1: He said it costs him about two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: out of pocket to get all the prescription meds. See
Speaker 1: all of these specialists, doctors. This isn't cheap. What is
Speaker 1: the risk that this trend pushes people to start behaving
Speaker 1: or eating unhealthily. Well, I spoke to the director of
Speaker 1: the Eating Disorder National Program, and she said that any
Speaker 1: type of diet can lead to eating disorders, especially one
Speaker 1: like fasting, where you sort of get into this reward
Speaker 1: cycle where you feel like you really accomplished something by
Speaker 1: not eating. You see the weight loss, So there's definitely
Speaker 1: a risk there. This is This is why I think
Speaker 1: it's really important. And everyone again we talked to said
Speaker 1: this is you got to do it in consultation with
Speaker 1: your doctor, with a medical expert. Admittedly weird people who
Speaker 1: have the advantage of, you know, great health care and
Speaker 1: access to physicians. Not everyone does, but certainly anybody who's
Speaker 1: going to embark on something like this needs to be
Speaker 1: in contact with a physician. And bottom line, this is difficult,
Speaker 1: expensive and non intuitive. So right now, it's makes sense
Speaker 1: that it's really concentrated in Silicon Valley, where there's a
Speaker 1: sort of engineering mindset. So, Tom, fasting, is this phenomenon
Speaker 1: here in Silicon Valley? Uh? Considering though that it is expensive,
Speaker 1: considering that you need medical oversight. Uh, considering that eating
Speaker 1: three meals a day and snacking is something of its
Speaker 1: own religion elsewhere in the country, can this spread outside
Speaker 1: of tech? Yeah, you're right. There is a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons why this appeals here. And it's very convenient and
Speaker 1: something of a luxury for people who live in cities
Speaker 1: like San Francisco, New York City. Plus there's a huge
Speaker 1: economic incentive for the food industry to get us to
Speaker 1: buy into this idea that we have to have breakfast,
Speaker 1: we have to have snacks, we have to have three
Speaker 1: plus meals a day. So there's a lot of reasons why. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's unlikely to spread. Having said that, there is
Speaker 1: a there are a lot of people. There's a growing
Speaker 1: number of people who are spreading this religion of I
Speaker 1: just feel better and this is more effective than anything
Speaker 1: I've tried. We've talked to so many people who say
Speaker 1: they did everything, they tried, every dieting fad, you name it,
Speaker 1: um and this is the only thing that worked for them. So,
Speaker 1: if you look at it across this country and there
Speaker 1: is an obesity epidemic, if people can find something that's
Speaker 1: gonna let them in a healthy way, lose weight and
Speaker 1: feel better. I think that resonates. And that's it for
Speaker 1: this week's episode of Decryptic. Thanks for listening. What do
Speaker 1: you think of today's show? Email us at decrypted at
Speaker 1: bloomberg dot net or reach out to us on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm at at ts Giles, and I'm at Selena Underscore
Speaker 1: Why Underscore Way, then I'm at Bradston. If you haven't already,
Speaker 1: please subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcast,
Speaker 1: and leave us a rating and a review. This episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Akido Piaget Kari, Liz Smith, Magnus Hendrickson
Speaker 1: and Tofur Foreheads. A special thanks to Daniel Gross from
Speaker 1: y Combinator, Jeffrey Woo of Human and Peter Atia. Francesco
Speaker 1: Leady is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week.