Episode 379: Special Guest: Chris Rhodes (Mimio), Fasting Mimetics, Anti-Inflammatory, Autophagy, Fasting Metabolites, OAE, PEA, Spermidine, Nicotinamide, And More!

Intermittent Fasting

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Jul 21

Welcome to Episode 379 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.

Today's episode of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast is brought to you by:

APOLLO NEURO: Apollo uses sound wave technology to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and instantly turn off stress with the touch of a button! Use this wearable lifestyle enhancer to regulate your body's stress response, improve sleep quality, resolve insomnia, improve heart rate variability, support a state of calm, and more! Go to ifpodcast.com/apollo and use promo code IFPODCAST for 15% off!

To submit your own questions, email questions@ifpodcast.com, or submit your questions here!! 

SHOW NOTES

APOLLO NEURO: Go to ifpodcast.com/apollo and use promo code IFPODCAST for 15% off!

MIMIO: Go to mimiohealth.com and use the code IFPODCAST to save 20% off your first order!

Chris' personal story

Comprehensive metabolomics

Fasting mimetics

The role of variability across study members

Controlled habitual diets

OAE (Oleoylethanolamide), PEA (Palmitoylethanolamide), Spermidine, nicotinamide

Determining dosing

Were there diminishing returns at the higher dose?

Making fasting easier and more palatable

Our content does not constitute an attempt to practice medicine and does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult a qualified healthcare provider for medical advice and answers to personal health questions.

TRANSCRIPT

(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.) 

Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 379 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Panels. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for The Intermittent Fasting Podcast.

Melanie Avalon:
Hi, friends. Just a quick note before we jump into today's episode, which I am so excited about. It is with a very special guest, and you are going to learn so much about what happens in your body during fasting and how you can potentially really enhance that majorly. We're going to talk about how you can potentially get the benefits of a 36 -hour fast during your daily fast. I personally am so excited about Mimeo. I'm going to try it out myself. I do want to note one thing about the ingredients. You guys know I am really intense when it comes to the fillers that are in supplements. Mimeo does contain a vegetable form of magnesium stearate, so I did just want to put that disclaimer out there. After talking with Chris and learning about the supplement, though, I personally think the benefits likely way outweigh any negative effects from magnesium stearate, which likely is benign. You guys just know me. I like to be kind of crazy and super intense with every single ingredient that I put in my body, so that's just a small disclaimer. Like I said, I am personally going to take Mimeo. I'm so excited about it. And, friends, you can get 20% off if you go to ifpodcast .com slash Mimeo. That's M -I -M -I -O. And use the coupon code ifpodcast. That will get you 20% off. Okay, get ready to have your minds blown. Here we go. Hi, everybody, and welcome. This is episode number 379 of the intermittent fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon, and I am so excited because I have a very, very special guest today on the show here to talk about a topic that you guys are obsessed with, which is obviously fasting, but specifically some of the pretty cool metabolites and changes that happen in the body while fasting and how we can maybe potentially take those, I guess, compounds in supplement form and the effects of that. So there is so much science to dive deep into here. I am here with Dr. Chris Rhodes. He is the co -founder of a really cool company called Mimeo that we first connected, was it probably over a year ago now, I think,

Chris Rhodes:
Through Vanessa.

Melanie Avalon:
Yes, yes, it was. And quite a while ago now, I was really, really intrigued with the science of what they were doing. And so we had quite a few calls about everything. Since then, we were just chatting before this episode, we actually got to meet in person because they had a booth at Dave Asprey's 10th annual biohacking conference. And I was so excited because there's so many incredible brands at that conference. But I saw you guys and it's really exciting to, you know, connect with these people virtually. But then to actually get to meet in real life, it's just a whole other level. So that was a really, really special moment for me. And after we connected, we were like, we just have to have to have this show and dive into the science and everything that you guys are doing and you know, see how it may help listeners as well. So, Chris, thank you so much for being here.

Chris Rhodes:
Oh yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to dive deep and just chat about it.

Melanie Avalon:
Prior to prepping for this interview, I had read your website and we had had conversations and everything, but I hadn't actually gone and read the details of the clinical study that you conducted from, what was it, like 2018 to 2023? I was like, that's a long time to be working on something. Because didn't you actually do the initial study in 2018?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, we started the initial study in 2017, actually. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, so it was all it was all what I was doing for my graduate thesis, getting my PhD in nutritional biochemistry from UC Davis. So all of that research was kind of like the five and then the five years of actually getting my PhD, and then an additional two years of postdoc after that to kind of develop the technology that eventually became Mimeo.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, okay. Gotcha. That's awesome. So yeah, so point being, I went and actually read the whole thing and it's so cool. And I'm so excited to talk about it, talk about the formation of Mimeo, where to start. Okay, well, I guess your personal story, you did just tap on it a little bit right then. But when you... Okay, so what made you decide to do that initial study in the first place? Did you have any idea when you started it where it was going to land? Like ultimately, that it would lead to the formation of this company that you have.

Chris Rhodes:
No, no, not at all. So I mean, the long story short of it is I got my BS in biochemistry from Loyola Marymount University down in LA. That was in 2013. And you know, like a lot of college kids got out didn't really know what I wanted to do. So I took an immunology fellowship at Stanford, where I just started pouring through all the research that I could get my hands on trying to find out what you know, really lit me up inside, and eventually came across, you know, longevity research, which I thought was fascinating, because it was this area that used to be, you know, the realm of like myth and legend, right, Ponce de Leon, and the fountain of youth and all that. But suddenly now it was becoming this very interesting and very robust area of scientific research. And when you're in that space, eventually you come across fasting, because fasting is one of the most reliable ways that we know of to extend lifespan in model organisms. And beyond that, when you dive deeper into, you know, the 1000s of studies that have been done on it, you see that it can help to treat prevent and delay most major diseases at the same time. So it's kind of this one thing that does everything. And what I found so fascinating about it was that it does all of that without actually adding anything into the system, right? It's not like this superfood or this wonder drug that's doing all that work. But somehow fasting is activating all of these regenerative systems and this, you know, longevity bio program that already exists inside of us, but just isn't ordinarily activated. And when that clicked for me, I actually got kind of mad about it. I was very much like, so my body knows how to live to be 120 and in perfect health, but it's just not doing it. And, and that's what kind of sent me down the rabbit hole of like, all right, I need to figure out what is happening in the human body during a fast to see if there's some way that we can kind of, you know, recreate it, right? Activate those same benefits, activate those regenerative systems, that longevity bio program on demand. And that's what I decided to do for my PhD research. And I went to UC Davis, got my PhD in nutrition, and like did the clinical study essentially to look at what was happening there.

Melanie Avalon:
That is so cool. I love it. I also just love that you captured all of the magic and fasting in that intro.

Chris Rhodes:
That's my specialty. That's what I'm here for.

Melanie Avalon:
I know if you're like the billboard for fasting, this is so incredible. So can we actually talk about that study that you did because I'm just so, so fascinated by it. What I really loved about the setup of it, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but basically you had 20 people, I think, and they, you tested them at four different times. So it was in the fed state, it was in the technically fasted state, but basically once you're entering the fasted state, so like the beginning ish of a fast.

Chris Rhodes:
A typical overnight fasting state is like a 10 to 12 hour mark.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so beginning of the fast and then deeper into a 36 -hour fast and then refeeding after that 36 -hour fast. Was that the four times?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, those are the four. Yep, yep, that was it. Yeah, so what we did for that, just like you said, we had 20 people come in, 10 men and 10 women, so we were avoiding a gender bias. That was something that's very important, especially in the fasting research phase. There's not enough research done on women, so we wanted to make sure that we were getting a good, accurate representation of both genders. Yeah, we had them do an overnight fasted state, then had them eat their normal diet throughout the first day of the study. And then two hours after their last meal, after eating all day, we took a blood draw. Then we had them fast for 36 hours, which we then tracked for compliance through glucose monitoring to make sure that no one was eating or cheating. Took a 36 hour fasted time point. And then on that third day, we had them eat just like they were eating on day one. So the exact same meals, the exact same timing, and then two hours after that, we took another blood draw and basically looked at all of the functional differences of their cells and their plasma between each of those states. And what we found was really, really interesting because of course, you could, like when we're in this postprandial state, when we're in this fed state, there's usually this big loss of plasma functionality. And that is because you have all this, these nutrients that are pouring into the system, throwing everything out of homeostasis, right? All this metabolic chaos that your body has to deal with or else it'll die. And then you also have all the foreign molecules that are coming in, just because like broccoli, food, whatever, they're not humans. So they're coming into your body and they're creating some kind of immune response. So you have these inflammatory responses, the metabolic responses, that being thrown out of homeostasis, and then also kind of deprioritizing other functionalities in order to focus on digestion and metabolism and all of that. So we see this, we saw this big loss of plasma functionality there. And of course, the baseline state was much better than that. But what was really, really interesting is that the 36 hour facet state was the best of them all. So the overnight fast is what we would call the baseline state and the 36 hour fast was able to really, really enhance functionality even beyond that. So there was something unique about the 36 hours of fasting that basically turned these already young, healthy people into super people. Their plasma became more anti -inflammatory, it became more antioxidant, it became more cardio protective. And of course, their metabolic markers were way better. So that was fascinating for us because it's really hard to do that with a nutritional intervention, especially a single like one day intervention, taking already healthy people and really enhancing their functionality. So we were like, all right, what is the difference between one state and the other? And what we found was that we did what's called comprehensive metabolomics, basically looking at all of the small molecule components of the plasma. And we found that there were over 300 significant differences between the baseline state and the 36 hour fasted state. Those were kind of the ones that were basically responsible for activating a lot of these beneficial cellular health effects. So we screened through that list of 300 looking for ones that already had some kind of evidence of bioactivity, whether that was in creating anti -inflammatory effects or enhancing autophagy. And when we screened through that list, we were able to find this synergistic combination of four of those metabolites that when we use them in isolation could recreate these same beneficial effects of fasting, those same anti -inflammatory, antioxidant, cardioprotective benefits in human cells. And then even beyond that, and this is the thing that I think is so cool, we were able to enhance lifespan in C. elegans by 96% just through supplementation. So basically doubling their lifespan by using these fasting metabolites. So that's kind of what the MIMIO formulation ultimately ended up being. And what it is is that it's taking what your body naturally produces during a 36 hour fast and giving it back to people as a supplement so that you can raise your levels of those metabolites even when you're eating and get the same benefits of fasting, but without actually having the fast.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. This is so, so cool. Okay. I have so many questions. So when you were looking through those metabolites, actually before that, I just want to make sure I'm going to like repeat some of what you said to make sure I'm understanding and the listeners are understanding. So basically, basically you tested people's blood at different times of fasting and eating. And you found that in this longer fasted state, this 36 hour fasted state, the, there were certain compounds elevated in the blood and that composition of blood itself is a more, I guess, like anti -inflammatory state of blood. And when you took that, those compounds themselves and tested them on human, so not in human people's bodies, but in their actual cells in vitro, you saw certain beneficial effects. And then also when you tested it and like you said, the C. elegans, you saw the lifespan extension. Is that like kind of what happened?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Taking those same molecules that are really only produced in the body during a fast and then just giving them back to either cells or the C. elegans, that's where we found that we could mimic these beneficial effects of fasting just through, basically recreating fasting at the molecular level. That's more or less what the MIMIO formulation is trying to do.

Melanie Avalon:
So questions. You mentioned there was over 300 metabolites. How did you decide, did you know from the beginning that it was that you're going to pick four? Like, was there like a fifth and a sixth one that were kind of close up there? Like, how did you decide the four?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, absolutely. So, of the 300 that we originally identified from the metabolomics, around a dozen of them were already known to have some kind of bioactive ability, right? In the literature, there had already been studies showing that, okay, this molecule or this molecule or this molecule has some kind of cellular effect. So, we took those, you know, around a dozen, and we screened them through all of those same cellular functionalities that we had been looking at during a 36 -hour fast. And from there, we were able to find, like, okay, you know, this molecule can explain maybe the anti -inflammatory effects, this molecule can explain these antioxidant effects, this molecule can explain the autophagy, like upregulation, right? And so, then we started combining the molecules together and found that there was this synergistic combination of four of them, that when we put them together created effects that could recreate all the, you know, the things that we were seeing during the actual fast, but then do so in a way that was greater than the sum of their parts, right? So, for example, with the C. elegans, when we tested these four molecules out individually, you know, they could extend lifespan by 5%, 10%, maybe up to 20% on their own, but it was only when we combined them together into that combination of four did we see this synergistic extension of lifespan up to 96%. So, these molecules are really activating these, you know, complementary pathways that are kind of recreating that, like we said, bio -program of fasting. So, we're trying to more accurately recreate the biological complexity that happens with some of the most powerful molecules that we could find from that data set.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, awesome. And I definitely want to go through them. Before that, I'm curious if you have thoughts, because I feel like there's two really big factors that I'm wondering if they affect the implications or the manifestations of these compounds. So one would be, is there a difference between, and again, we can go through them in a little bit, and that probably would be helpful for listeners, but is there a difference between our body endogenously creating these compounds versus taking them exogenously? Like, do they look any different to the body? Does the body know where they came from? And then I'll wait for the second one. So yeah, so that question.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, so that's a great question. And for these particular molecules, no, the body can't really tell the difference between something that you're going to take as a supplement, as long as it's, you know, bioidentical, right, versus the endogenously produced metabolite. And that's because metabolites don't have post translational modifications like proteins do, for example. So there's no decorations that says like, this is a human molecule versus this is a, like a plant molecule for these specific ones. If we were talking about proteins, then yes, it would depend, there would be differences based on, you know, what organism was the one that produced the protein in the first place and where did it come from and how it was treated. But for these metabolites, they're more chemical signalers rather than like protein enzymes.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, that completely makes sense, so the body doesn't really know. Second question is, when you test the compounds on the human cells in vitro, are those cells fasted cells?

Chris Rhodes:
Actually, yeah. And those cells are not fasted cells. We made sure that they were not fasted cells because we wanted to make sure that they had all the glucose and proteins and fats that they would need to essentially recreate a fed state, right? And then added in the fasting metabolites so that we could assess, you know, if you gave this to people when they were actually eating, what would happen? And would they still be able to recreate these effects?

Melanie Avalon:
That's one of my biggest questions is, you know, what is the difference of having these in the fasted state versus in the fed state?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, absolutely. And we can we can go into this a little bit later on. So we actually did a we've done already a pilot clinical study to look at what happens when humans actually take these, you know, the fasting mimetic formula, they take Mimeo during a meal and basically looking at the before and afters there and how it impacts their cellular functions and their plasma functions.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, awesome. Yeah, I definitely, definitely love to talk about that. I'm super curious the effects of them in the fastest state, like is it amplifying all of these beneficial effects? And then in the postprandial fed state, like you talked about, and you talked about in the paper, which is already naturally an inflammatory state by its very nature, is it more just mitigating damage versus supercharging the beneficial effects?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I think that there's going to be both components to that, right? I think that, you know, you can use Mimeo and this formulation as a fasting mimetic. You can take it with food and it will help to prevent a lot of these negative impacts of eating. That's what we saw in our pilot clinical study. But while also recreating a lot of these beneficial effects of fasting, whereas you can also use the formulation as a fasting enhancer when you are fasting, right? So, you know, it was designed to mimic what happens in the body during a 36 hour fast, which, you know, on a daily basis, most people are not experiencing, right? If they're doing fasting, they're probably doing 16 eight or one meal a day or something like that. So that can really those molecules can help to, like you said, supercharge and jumpstart those benefits and even provide you some of the benefits of a longer term fast that you wouldn't actually experience in the shorter term fast, like the one meal a day or the 16 eight.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Okay. Okay. I just have a really quick, super rabbit hole question, but I thought it was really interesting in the study. The way it was posited was basically that this could be a good alternative for people who can't fast. I was wondering if the evolution of your thinking, like when you were doing it back then, were you also kind of anticipating that it might be, you know, for people who do fast, but they use it to either combat eating or enhance their natural fast, or were you really thinking of it in that terms of just for people who can't fast? I'm just curious, your mindset.

Chris Rhodes:
When we were doing it, I mean, my mindset, I'm not going to lie. My mindset was a little bit selfish at the time, right? I was like, like I said, I got mad that like my body wasn't doing these things. So I was like, I want to create something that, you know, gives me the ability to have these fasting, like benefits, even without being able to fast. But I do think that it's very like worth saying that yes, there are populations and who cannot fast, who it's not safe for them to do that. Or maybe it's not advisable, like especially elderly people, right? The people who could probably get the most benefit from these regenerative cellular effects, but who fasting is really not advisable because of all the problems with, you know, sarcopenia and frailty and, you know, um, like bone density and muscle wasting that they need the consistent calories in order to be able to sustain themselves. So I think that for older populations, the fasting mimetic is great to do because we really do want people to be able to get all these benefits without the pretty intense, the pretty intense effort that goes into a full 36 hour fast, and then even beyond that consistently doing a 36 hour fast to be able to get these benefits over a long period of time.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, no, it's awesome. I mean, even for me, I've I mean, people probably surprises people, but I have not done that many fasts that are longer than 24 hours, just a handful. And it's not pleasant for me. I don't do well. Okay, here's the thing. If the day was longer, so if it was like a 36 hour day, I could do it hands down. If it was a 48 hour day, I could probably do it hands down. But I can't sleep on an empty stomach. It just messes up my circadian rhythm. I've always thought that like, at the end of the day, oh, if I could just I could go to the 12 hours right now if I could just not sleep. So the point being is I'm actually I'm very much alert by this concept, because it's like, oh, maybe I could take this and I could, you know, get the potential benefits of a more extended fast without doing that actual 36 hour fast. I'm like very much alert by this. This is amazing.

Chris Rhodes:
Cool. And I agree with you. That was one of the hardest parts. So when we were doing the initial studies to figure out what the right timing was to look at for the larger clinical study, I was actually doing a 60 -hour fast and taking my blood throughout the time course of that fast to see, all right, where do we start to see the changes over from the postprandial state to more of the fasted state? Where does the glycogen disappear? When do we start to see these anti -inflammatory effects? When do we really see like the peak of these functional enhancements? During that 60 -hour fast, it was really difficult to sleep on both of the days, right, to get past the 48 -hour mark. And that was like the second day trying to go to sleep. That was the hardest because my body was, and I was like very terrified that I was going to actually die, right? I was like, if I go to sleep, I'm just convinced that I won't make up in the morning. And of course, like that didn't happen, right? But it's one of those weird things where, yeah, there's this funny psychological component to doing extended fast where it's like, I've never fasted this long before. I've never fasted this long before. Like, is this the hour that it all turns against me? But when you get out the other side of it, it's a very empowering thing because you really come out of it with this higher sense of control of your own body, your own impulses. And you get to realize that skipping a meal, like if I don't want to eat that pizza that somebody like brought into the workroom, right? Like I can just do that and it's going to be fine. Like I've gone 60 hours without eating before and I didn't die. So it just kind of gives you a lot more of that personal control and that empowerment to just, I don't know, take more agency in your food destiny, right?

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, I definitely feel it. One of the things I used to say to myself is, if I could do it one time, then I can do it 100 times because there's something about just knowing you can do it. And then the doors open, you can like totally do it again. But you have to just do it that first time. Yeah, that's the trick. And actually one other question about the, because you were just talking about, you know, you testing your own blood and things that you found. And the study was talking about how there was a lot of variability in the different responses between the people by as much as 14 times. What role did that play? So like, again, we're going to go through the four compounds. But for the four compounds, were some of them overwhelmingly, obviously elevated in everybody? Were there some where, you know, the odd person here didn't even have that one compound elevated? Like, what was the role of variability?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, that's a great question. So for the four that we actually ended up looking at, they were all universally upregulated. But yes, you varying degrees, right? Like some people had like, all right, I have maybe like a 2x increase in my circulation, right? Whereas other people were like, Yeah, I had a 7x increase in my circulation. But they were all across all people totally universally upregulated, because there are just certain obligate responses that the body has to do during a fast. And that's why I think it's really interesting to study fasting, because it's this evolutionarily conserved program within humans that, you know, you can track and you can measure and you can see and there's while there is of course going to be person to person variability, there's also going to be a certain set of these universal changes that happen, because if those changes don't happen, then we die.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, actually, I'll probably save this when we talk about Spermidine, like, I'd be curious how they were different based on people's baseline dietary intake of some of these things, you know, if that had an effect.

Chris Rhodes:
I mean, we definitely did analyze the starting metabolites and the people's diets and we made sure that like everybody was essentially eating the same thing before and after, right? That there wasn't any changes in the diet that they were consuming throughout the course of the study and that everything was pretty well matched. So there wasn't a ton of like, honestly, there wasn't a ton of sperm and intake just to begin with, right? Right? Americans have a very classically low intake of spermidine, especially when you consider something like a Mediterranean diet or a typical European diet. We're pretty deficient because we don't have a ton of whole grains typically, and we also don't have a ton of fermented food products in our day -to -day diets.

Melanie Avalon:
I'd love to dive more into that. One quick question about the diets. I'm super curious because you talked about it in the study and you talked about just now how you use this quote controlled habitual diet setup. And it was saying in the study that like to your knowledge is the first time that that's been used. Do you know if anybody else is going to use that? I'm just wondering if you're like starting a thing here, like a methodology. Did you create a methodology?

Chris Rhodes:
I mean, we did, we did create a methodology and you know, this is again coming from the nutrition background, right? Like people are, had they, they have different responses to different diets, right? So one of the big problems in nutrition research is that when you take people who are eating these very disparate diets and then put them all on one singular standardized diet, people are going to respond differently to that diet based on their, you know, genetics and their food preferences and the diets that their body have gotten used to eating and digesting and metabolizing. So when you put people on a standardized diet, there's always a certain period of adaptation that has to happen because it's essentially throwing the system out of its nice little bubble of homeostasis and into this whole new diet that it has to now learn how to properly absorb and digest and get used to. And since we were only doing a three day study, we did not have the time to get people adapted to a new standardized diet. We had to find a way to make sure that, you know, what the people were eating was going to be consistent on the fed day versus the refed day, but without actually altering what they would typically eat. So that's where we got the idea for a controlled habitual diet. So they come in, they eat just as they would, you know, if they weren't in the study on the first day, but all they have to do is just track exactly what they're eating. And then on the next eating day, they just adhere to that exact same diet and with no changes. So we knew that exactly what we saw and experienced on the first day of feeding was going to be what we saw and experienced on the refed day so that we could accurately track what the carryover effects of just the fasting was rather than having any other variables that are coming from the diet.

Melanie Avalon:
I was actually wondering when I was reading it, did they know when they were eating the first day and writing it down that they were going to be given back the list and told to eat that exactly again the second day?

Chris Rhodes:
Yes, they did. So they had knowledge of it going into it. We didn't just like spring it on them. So it wasn't... And we told them basically like, you know, just eat like a normal day. Like don't try and like be fancy about it. Don't do anything. Just whatever you would normally do, do that because you're going to have to do it again.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Okay. So cool. Okay. So these four compounds. So, so they are, okay. I got to learn how to pronounce these. Thankfully, they have acronyms. So OEA stands for, okay. So it's O -L, wait, do you want to say it?

Chris Rhodes:
It's Oleoylethanolamide, that's OEA.

Melanie Avalon:
Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, Ollie. Oh, can you say it again? How do you say it?

Chris Rhodes:
I know, it's the biggest tongue twister of all of them. Oleoylethanolamide

Melanie Avalon:
It's weird because looking at it doesn't quite, like, doesn't quite look like that. Okay, Oleoylethanolamide OEA. Okay, so OEA. So there's that one. And that one is...

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, so that one is, that one's produced by intestinal cells and it's involved in the gut -brain axis where it stimulates satiety, helps to suppress appetite. And then it's also a PPAR alpha activator, which means that it is promoting lipid metabolism within cells, so like fat -specific breakdown for energy utilization. Then that is really, really interesting because it's also one of the mechanisms by which your body helps to produce GLP1. So like there's been really interesting in vitro studies showing that OEA stimulates the secretion of GLP1, which is of course, you know, part of the whole hunger and satiety mechanism as well.

Melanie Avalon:
And so for GLP -1 things that people might be familiar with that because of Ozempic and GLP -1 agonists.

Chris Rhodes:
Right exactly i can i kinda like to think of Oleoylethanolamide as kind of like your body is natural i was in big to a certain degree right.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, very cool. And then trust that we should dive deeper into that or go over the four other ones. I'll ask one question about it. So I saw that it's a fatty acid derivative of oleic acid. Could it be a reason behind the benefits of high olive oil diets?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, I think that that's a really interesting question as well. And I would say yes, I think that there's definitely, there's definitely like, you know, big health and longevity effects to OEA, OEA is found in olive oil. And you know, when and it's been shown that when people consume a lot of oleic acid, OEA does also get upregulated in the system. So I would definitely say that OEA would be a component of something like why a Mediterranean diet has such great lifespan extension benefits. And we were the first one to really show that OEA has the ability to extend lifespan. So that was really exciting for us as well.

Melanie Avalon:
And it says it's also highly concentrated in organ meats.

Chris Rhodes:
Yep, definitely true as well. That's the nice thing about a lot of the fasting metabolites and the endogenous human metabolites that we're looking at is that, yes, they are a natural part of the human system and produced endogenously, but they're also found pretty widely throughout the food stream and in animal products and plant products.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so that's O -E -A, so really helping feelings of satiety and all of that. So then another one, hard to pronounce, P -E -A, how do we say that one?

Chris Rhodes:
So that one is palmitoylethanolamide. So same family of molecules as ole oil ethanolamide, but it's a derivative, a fatty amide derivative of palmitic acid. Okay. And that one is, it's actually, that's my favorite of the four. It has these really fascinating and wide reaching effects. I like to think of it as the body's kind of like rest and recovery molecule. So it's very potently anti-inflammatory. It has COX-1 and 2 inhibition effects, which is the same mechanism of action as like ibuprofen or aspirin, but then it's also a CB1, CB2 receptor agonist. So kind of behaves a little bit like your body's natural CBD and that it's going to create these mood elevation effects. It has effects on decreasing neuroinflammation, but also really interestingly pain relief effects as well. So really good clinical evidence for palmitoethanolamide being able to relieve pain, especially, you know, kind of like joint pain, nerve pain, things like fibromyalgia or diabetic neuropathy, things like that. So it's kind of, you know, it's kind of this little miracle molecule that has not only these great underlying cellular health benefits, but then also gives you kind of these effects that you can feel. It's also was just recently in a new clinical study shown to be able to enhance cognition in college students, which is again, one of those big things where it's like you're taking already young, healthy people and, you know, enhancing their cognitive functionality, which is really impressive.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, that's super cool. I had notes. I don't know if this was from your website. I think this was from your website. It was talking about how it has even been posited to be a natural CBD alternative for athletes, for example.

Chris Rhodes:
Absolutely. It's WADA compliant and has a lot of these similar effects of CBD because it signals through the same cannabinoid receptors. But yeah, it's an endocannabinoid, part of your endocannabinoid system. So all natural to the human body won't cause any flags on a drug test or anything like that. And your body just naturally knows how to use it, break it down so there's no real negative effects of it as well.

Melanie Avalon:
That is super cool. Okay, so foods we would normally get that from, primarily legumes.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah. Yeah. palmitoylethanolamide is one of those ones that you don't find quite as readily in the food stream. You know, it's going to be produced from palmitic acid, but there's a lot of things that are going to be produced from palmitic acid. So taking palmitic acid is not like the best way to get the palmitoyl ethanolamide. So that one I usually tell people it's better to supplement with because it's a lot more controllable.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, awesome. And then circling back to the one we mentioned earlier, which is spermidine. So we were talking about how we met at the biohacking conference. The prior year I had gone to the biohacking conference in Orlando. And I feel like spermidine people had, I feel like it's really in the past like, maybe two years that people have started talking about it more. And I never really had looked into it. And then I ended up hanging out for a long time with one of the big spermidine supplement companies, some of the people from it at the conference last year. That made me really intrigued because, you know, they were really good at pitching the benefits of it. That said, since then, so I've looked at it like a little bit more. But then since then, I actually was reading, I interviewed Dr. Michael Greger. I don't know if you know him, he's really big in the vegans here. But he has a new book out called How Not to Age. And reading his chapter on spermidine, I was like, whoa, maybe this does seem really, really powerful. He was talking about how he was talking about one study where they looked at all of these different kind of similar to your study in a way where they looked at all of these different, but it wasn't testing blood or anything. I was looking at people's food intake and looking at all these different compounds and what was the highest one correlated to basically good health outcomes. And it was spermidine, like hands down. I remember that study. Oh, you do. Okay, awesome. So yeah, so spermidine. So again, this is something we actually can get in our diet. And it seems pretty evident that, you know, certain healthy populations have higher levels compared to, you know, unhealthy populations, which are lower. So, okay, so spermidine. So, so what is it? What's the difference in getting it from food versus being created in our body? And what are the benefits?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, absolutely. So spermidine is a really interesting molecule, probably best known for its ability to stimulate autophagy. That is your body's cellular recycling process, essentially. So that's the way that your cell kind of breaks down dysfunctional organelles or faulty proteins and kind of cleans it up, breaks them down to their constitutive parts so that you can then use it to create new functional versions. And it's a way that cells both optimize their functionality from a removing dysfunction point of view while also increasing their metabolic efficiency by taking those building blocks and then being able to use them to create new things without having to actually have any net new resources available. So obviously, it's a very important process that happens in fasting. Right? You're getting rid of all the bad stuff that isn't serving you while also gaining resources that you wouldn't otherwise have in order to make new things that the cell needs to survive. So spermidine became very popular because it can do that. And it was first popularized kind of like as almost a fasting memetic because of its ability to enhance autophagy. And autophagy has become very synonymous with fasting. It's a breakdown product of arginine. So just a, you know, simple amino acid and yeah, really highly available in wheat germ than certain algaes and fermented food products from the bacterial synthesis of it. So very much a component of probiotics as well.

Melanie Avalon:
The last one is actually a form of B3, nicotinamide.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, that's right, nicotinamide. And so yeah, we think of nicotinamide as basically a broad spectrum NAD plus precursor, right? So it's the thing that, you know, when you take it into your body, it's going to be converted into NMN, it's going to be converted into NR, it's going to be converted into NAD. So taking that as your precursor molecule kind of helps to increase concentration of, you know, all three of the big ones that are important in the anti -aging and longevity space. And the reason why the NAD plus is really important, especially in like a fasting mimetic blend is because NAD is one of the main mechanisms that your body or your cells sense their energy state. And that has to do with the balance between two molecules NAD and NADH. So when you have high levels of NAD and low levels of NADH, that basically tells your cells that there's not a lot of energy around and we should start making these, you know, DNA modifications, these protein translation modifications, these functional modifications that skew more towards these kind of like fasting pathways, this metabolic efficiency and these pro longevity and survival mechanisms. So the thinking behind taking supplements like NAD precursors is that we can increase the levels of NAD within cells without actually having to, you know, reduce our actual energy intake. Essentially, we're like tricking ourselves into thinking that we have less energy than we actually do to help them activate, you know, this, these fasting pathways. And so when you have that in the formulation, like Mimeo, it makes it easier for all of the other components to do their job, because they're supposed to be existing in a fasting environment. And the increase in NAD plus is basically telling the cell like, okay, it's okay, we are fasting. So let everybody else do the thing they're supposed to be doing.

Melanie Avalon:
So on the website, so I'm a little bit unclear, are there different versions of nicotinamide? Like when you call it on the website 1 -M -N -A, is that a certain version of nicotinamide or is that a synonymous?

Chris Rhodes:
Right. So one methyl nicotinamide is like an even further down breakdown product of nicotinamide. So for a very long time, people thought that one methyl nicotinamide was just a waste product, right? It was like, okay, we have the NAD metabolism. It eventually gets broken down into one methyl nicotinamide and then one methyl nicotinamide is broken down and excreted. Essentially, it's kind of like the last stage of nicotinamide and NAD metabolism. But really interesting new research has come out that's basically shown that one M &A has a lot of interesting bioactive capabilities in itself. It's very anti -inflammatory. It has these cardio protective effects. It has these like exercise, like enhancement effects, these energy enhancement effects. And that's actually the molecule that we found in the original clinical study of the discovery of the fasting metabolites that worked within this synergistic combination of spermidine, PEA, and OEA. So the reason why we use nicotinamide in our formulation at the end of the day is because we're kind of getting the most bang bang for our buck. We're helping to increase NAD and our NMN and one methyl nicotinamide, all at the same time, just through one molecule.

Melanie Avalon:
So it contains nicotinamide or it contains that downstream metabolite, 1 -Mminin -A.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, it contains nicotinamide. So it contains the upstream precursor, and then we confirmed in our pilot clinical study that when you take nicotinamide, it increases the circulating levels of one methyl nicotinamide.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, gotcha. Also, I'm curious because there is so much the NAD world is so confusing, I think.

Chris Rhodes:
It's a little fraught, that's for sure.

Melanie Avalon:
You know, because there's NMN, NR, nicotinamide, then people taking straight NAD through IVs or injections, or I've recently, well, not recently, in the past year or so, I've been using patches, which I really, really love. A question though, because like I mentioned earlier, Dr. Greger's book, and he actually had a really, really good overview of all the different precursors. He had a section on nicotinamide, and he talked about how it could potentially, while it activates sirtuins, it could actually potentially be a sirtuin inhibitor because of a negative feedback loop system. Like basically he was saying, if the body senses higher levels of nicotinamide, it assumes there's enough and can actually shut down that process. Do you know if that's an issue at all?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, that's a really good question. I remember I remember reading that study as well. And I haven't found it to actually be an issue. So when you when you actually read it through, like there, there are problems with the like the pathway of the nad metabolism, essentially, because everything and everything operates on a feedback loop, right, where, okay, if we have a bunch of nad, then we're going to shunt nicotinamide metabolism away from nad production into maybe something like nmn production or nr production or, or even just going downstream to the one methyl nicotinamide production. But your body can still increase nad levels, you know, beyond its natural capacity. And you can see that in all of all of the clinical studies that have been that have been done with most of the nad precursors is that when you have when you take nicotinamide, when you take nr, when you take nmn, you do still get this like big increase in the nad plus levels.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay. Yeah. It's a confusing world, but it's nice to know. So in your study, you tested nicotinamide independently and synergistically with the compounds? Yes, that's correct. And you saw these beneficial effects. Awesome.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we saw the we saw the lifespan extension effects. We saw the clinical effects. We saw the cellular effects.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome, okay. Okay, so that was a deep dive into these four ingredients. And how did you decide the concentration to use?

Chris Rhodes:
That's a great question. So this was actually based on the pilot clinical study that we did. So this was designed to be like a dosing and pharmacokinetic study, but then also, you know, a proof of concept for the functionality of the formulation. So what we did was we had five people come in and eat a standardized breakfast alongside a placebo control. And then for a period of, you know, six hours after that, we were taking their blood and looking at their plasma functionalities and their cellular functionalities like we did before in the fasting discovery study. So we did that for a standardized breakfast for the placebo control. And then we had those same people come in after a washout period and eat that same standardized breakfast, but alongside a alongside Mimeo and in different concentrations. So we did a low dose and medium dose and a high dose. And then we looked at their plasma functionalities again. And what we saw was when people ate this standardized breakfast on its own, there was this big loss of plasma functionality, right? Like we were talking about before, that's the effect of the postprandial state. So instead of their plasma became pro -inflammatory, became less antioxidant, it became less cardio protective. But when we did that same standardized breakfast, but with supplementation with Mimeo, we found that we could not only prevent all of that loss of function, but then actually add gains of function on top of that, that mimicked what we saw during fasting. So instead of being pro -inflammatory, their plasma became anti -inflammatory and antioxidant and cardio protective. And all of that was happened in the low dose of the formulation that we were trying. But you did get progressive benefits from the medium dose and the high dose as well.

Melanie Avalon:
the low dose was like the version that you have in the supplement form, and then the high dose was just dosing it higher.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, exactly. So basically, the low dose was what we had in the supplement form. And then like the medium dose was 2x that concentration, and the high dose was 3x that concentration. We've had two different formulations of NIMEO. The original one was based off of that pharmacokinetic study that was 400 milligrams of PEA, 300 milligrams of OEA, 5 milligrams of spermidine, and 500 milligrams of nicotinamide. So that was what we originally went out with and started selling to people and saw really great effects in that clinical study. Then as we progressed throughout our first year of sales, we started partnering up with some longevity clinical partners around the country, kind of looking at how these markers are being affected by MIMEO, what's the best way to use it. And a lot of our clinical partners actually started using a dose of three NIMEO capsules per day in order to help wean people off of the GLP -1 agonists like cosmetic and weak OV. And that's because of the appetite suppression effects of the OEA. So they were using a slightly higher dose to achieve this more clinical effect and more of those tangible effects you can feel. And so based off of that, we actually thought, all right, so we know that the first formula works in the underlying cellular components, but this higher dose, this three capsules per day seems to really be working to give people more of those tangible benefits, the appetite suppression, the mood enhancement, the cognition enhancement, things like that. So we did a reformulation to what is now the current formulation of MIMEO to increase the bioactives by 50%. So our new formulation is now 600 milligrams of PEA, 400 milligrams of OEA, 8 milligrams of spermidine, and 250 of nicotinamide.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, wait, and what did you say the surrounding was before?

Chris Rhodes:
It was five milli-

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, five. I said 500. I was like, okay. That's a... Okay. So it was five.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, that's a big reduction. No, no, yeah, it's actually yeah, that 50% increase for Sperm Redeem. Gotcha.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, that's super cool that they were using it with the Weaning people off of Osempic.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah. And that's what, you know, that's, that's the great thing about these molecules is that, you know, they, they have those, those tangible benefits in addition to the cellular ones, right? That's, that's always been my, one of my critiques about kind of what's out there in the longevity space right now is that a lot of them are operating on that, you know, more of the cellular level and less of the, what I would call treating the quote unquote, you know, symptoms of aging, right? Those like metabolic disruptions that can happen, like the aches and pains of actually getting older, like the memory problems that can crop up. So that's why I'm like, I, I know I'm biased, but I really love the Mimeo formulation because it's not, it's tackling both of those things at once, both the symptoms of aging and the underlying root causes.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow. So how do you recommend people take this? Should they take it with all of their meals while fasting? Can they overtake it? When you did that study where you were looking at the increasing amount, did you see any diminishing returns or with higher and higher doses at all?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, we definitely found a plateau, especially at like the higher dosage, right? But that's something that, you know, most people wouldn't be able to take anyway, right? Because at that point, we were using like a gram of nicotinamide and 1 .2 grams of PEA. So like really high concentrations that, you know, probably wouldn't be feasible on a day to day basis anyway. We definitely recommend daily use of the products, because that's what we have seen has the most consistent benefit. When you look at the clinical studies of the individual ingredients, it's always daily supplementation over the course of, you know, eight weeks, 12 weeks, six months, whatever it is, depending on the study. And that's where you see these, you know, these changes from baseline to the end point in the study. That's also, you know, where we saw the best lifespan extension, right? We started the C. elegans off, you know, early in their life stage and then kept them consistently on the formulation. And that's where we saw the 96%. So we don't really recommend cycling, although, you know, if people want to cycle, that's totally fine. But it's unnecessary just because, you know, on a day to day basis, your body wouldn't be experiencing these metabolites, right? Because they're only really elevated during a 36 hour fast. So you don't really get, you don't really get adapted to them over time.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so there's no like downregulation of endogenous production of or anything like that

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, because unless you are somehow fasting for 36 hours every day, you're not going to be highly producing these molecules anyway.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, so how do you personally take it?

Chris Rhodes:
So I like to take it as a fasting enhancer. So I still do my one meal a day protocol, but I'll take my Mimeo in the first thing in the morning when I wake up, usually with green tea. And I feel like that just really helps me get through my day. I love the one meal a day lifestyle for me because it's very much like I get to wake up, I get to go and I get to be productive all day. I'm not thinking about food or distracted with anything else, I'm very much in the zone. And then when that's done, I get to kind of decompress with what I like to call a big food reward at the end.

Melanie Avalon:
Me too!

Chris Rhodes:
I'm like, this is what my effort was all for. And yeah, and then it's just nice having the freedom of knowing that, you know, I'm going to have all of my calories in this one sitting. So it can, you know, it can be more of a feast and less of like, I feel like I was, you know, just having small portions throughout the entire day that feels more like, I call it food teasing. And it's not my favorite.

Melanie Avalon:
Oh, I could not agree more. One of my favorite things about the one meal a day approach and having it at the end of the day is that I like to be able to just enjoy my food and not have the stressors of I need to be working or I need, you know, there's something else I need to be doing right now. Like it's nice to like have finished the day and have that behind you and then just focus on relaxing and eating. It works so well for me.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, I was I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid. And so one of the main things that they do for you when you have that as kind of like a coping mechanism is to make sure that you have your spaces for things right where it's like, Okay, cool. Like this is your desk. That's your workspace. Like when you're at your desk, you focus on work and you don't do anything else except for focus on work when you're at that desk. And then you have another place. That's like, this is your fun space. And when you're there, you don't focus on anything else but fun. And so like that really helps to kind of give your mind like context and focus in where it when it needs to focus and then let go when it when it can. So I like to kind of structure my day in that very compartmentalized way as well where it's like when we're here when it's when we're doing this like this is what we're focused on and then we can have that food reward and that decompression at the end of the day.

Melanie Avalon:
actually related since it sounds like you're eating, you're doing an evening eating window at the end of the day. It relates to what we were saying earlier when you were talking about the the methodology you used with the habitual diet where people have to adapt to a certain diet. I read a study and I've got to find it because I keep referencing it so much. It was looking at people's eating window timing because there's this idea that you know eating late is not good for your sleep and they found that that was true but only if you weren't used to eating late. So like habitual people who ate late it was not a negative impact on their sleep which I thought was interesting and I like knowing that.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, and I think that's totally true. And it's it relates back to fasting as well, because it's all very much tied to your circadian rhythms, right? So your circadian rhythms and your hunger responses are very intimately linked to each other. And when you establish a pattern of eating throughout the day, then your body learns when to expect food. And when it learns that it'll also increase your hunger, like responses at the same time. So one of the cool things about fasting is that you can really reset that system where if you train your body to not have an expectation of food on a regular basis, then you don't really get hungry throughout the day because your body doesn't know like the timings of when to try to make you feel hungry.

Melanie Avalon:
Exactly. I just find it so, so freeing. It's so amazing. And now I'm just really excited about the potential here of, you know, enhancing my own fast since like I was saying earlier, I don't really ever do longer than a day. So this is beyond fascinating.

Chris Rhodes:
And then even beyond that too, you know, like with, there's the, there's the underlying cellular component to it, of course, but then there's also the ways that Mimeo can just make fasting like easier and more palatable at the same time, you know, we get a lot of people who, especially women who do shorter term intermittent fasting, like the 16 eight, but you know, something like one meal a day is very intimidating because there's just a lot of hunger responses that go, that go into that. And Mimeo with its appetite suppression effects can be really helpful for pushing people past where they could ordinarily go, right? We've had tons of people who are doing 16 eight where it's like, I took Mimeo at the beginning of my fast and I didn't have any problem getting to like 24 hours. So really being able to make that process easier and more enjoyable because you also have like the mood elevation effects that happen and the energizing effects that happen as well to help kind of combat the typical, you know, fatigue that you can get from fasting.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Okay. Well, I will go ahead and mention it now. So for listeners, if they would like to get Mimeo, and we can clarify how it's spelled, which by the way, how did you come up with the name?

Chris Rhodes:
Mimeo is a combination of mimic and biology together, and that speaks to, you know, our underlying biomimetic approach, basically, you know, taking what the body is naturally doing and then finding a way to recreate it on demand.

Melanie Avalon:
Okay, awesome. And so that's spelled M -I -M -I -O. So we made a link for listeners. If they go to ifpodcast .com slash Mimeo, M -I -M -I -O, and use the coupon code ifpodcast, you can get 20% off. I think that's your first order, I believe. Yes. So that's awesome, 20%. I'm really, really excited for people to try this and let us know what they experience. What's the main thing that you hear from people that they experience? The appetite suppression, that the fasting is easier.

Chris Rhodes:
Absolutely. Yeah. Fasting is easier. Appetite suppression. Interestingly, what we also really hear from people is performance enhancement. So one of our investors actually invested in Mimeo because, you know, we gave him a sample. He was going to go do a cycling course with his friends and he ended up, you know, he took Mimeo maybe like a half an hour before he actually went to do it and told us that like his, it was one of like the best rides he ever had. He set a personal record. He beat out all of his friends. He could like just go for longer without having any of the soreness. He recovered better the next day. So that was the reason why he invested in Mimeo was because he could take it, feel the benefits of it. And we've seen that kind of recapitulated in a lot of other folks as well, especially the higher tier athletes who are doing it. We were just on Ben Greenfield's podcast and he was basically, he was basically telling us that in the two months that he took Mimeo, he was able to put on 10 pounds of muscle, which is something that, you know, really hard to do, especially without, you know, some kind of, you know, biohack into the system. Right.

Melanie Avalon:
Wow, that's incredible. Is that episode air?

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, no, I just filmed it last week, but I think by the time that this episode airs, that episode will have aired.

Melanie Avalon:
That's super cool. I have actually never interviewed him and so he's coming on my other show in a few months which is exciting. I've got to read his book though, it's so long.

Chris Rhodes:
He's got a lot of knowledge, that's for sure.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. So again, so listeners can go to ifpodcast .com slash Mimeo, M -I -M -I -O. Use the coupon code ifpodcast to get 20% off. What is the... Because I know it's gone through a few formulations. Do you know what the future is? Do you think there'll be like another formulation in the future or another version of it? Or what's the future of the company?

Chris Rhodes:
For the fasting mimetic, there will probably be future formulations. You know, we have that data set of those 300 metabolites from the fasting study. And, you know, of that, we were able to screen through about that dozen, but that leads, you know, over 275 targets, right? That haven't had any research that have been done on them yet. So it gives us this big green field to kind of go through and see if there are other molecules that could fit into this synergistic formulation that no one's really ever heard before, right, but are still these natural, safe human molecules. So really, you know, using that as a research platform to build out the fasting mimetic. But in the vein of our biomimetic approach, and what we want NIMYA to ultimately be, is in the same way that we ran this process with fasting, we can run it with other interesting regenerative states in the body. So like exercise, for example, making an exercise mimetic or sleep or cold exposure or meditation, like, you know, really teasing out these interesting regenerative systems and regenerative processes and states in the body and finding ways that we can recreate those benefits on demand.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Wow. Well, I'm really, really excited about this. This is so cool. And I'll be completely honest, like when I first saw it, I was intrigued and alert. I was a little bit, I guess I was a little bit worried about, ironically, this discouraging people from fasting because it's like, oh, here's fasting in a pill. Now you don't have to fast. But I think, well, A, diving deep into the science of all of this, these ingredients, their effects just sound incredible. And like you were saying, it's not only can it potentially combat the inflammatory state of the eating state that we go into, but it can potentially enhance people's fasting. And I love that that's the focus here. And that, you know, we're not saying don't fast, take this pill. We're saying use this to enhance your fast and potentially combat some of the inflammatory effects of eating. So it's all an add -on and an addition to, you know, the incredibleness of intermittent fasting, unless you're one of those case studies that we talked about earlier where, you know, you can't fast. I basically just really, really love and appreciate the enhancement potential of this and the messaging surrounding that.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, absolutely. And I would say to like, for people who are more of the hardcore folks, right, who are like, Okay, I'm doing like a three to five day fast, like, you know, every couple of months, right? You know, this is something that can help to like, you know, sustain and enhance those benefits as well. Because, you know, you can't three to five day fast for the rest of your life, right? You got to have those periods in between where you are actually eating, and Mimeo can be really beneficial to, you know, help create those fasting like benefits, even during the times when you can't fast.

Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you, Chris. This is just so amazing. Was there anything else you wanted to touch on for listeners?

Chris Rhodes:
No, I think that we covered everything really happy.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. So again, so listeners go to IFPodcast .com slash Mimeo, M -I -M -I -O, use the coupon code IFPodcast to get 20% off your first order. And friends, definitely, I would love to hear your experience with this. So definitely write into us, let us know what you experience, you know, share it in our Facebook groups. I'm just I'm just really excited. And thank you for for doing what you're doing and drawing attention to, A, drawing attention to the incredible things that happen in our body while we're fasting. And thank you for doing those studies and, you know, bringing light to that. And then on top of that, making this product that people can take to really, you know, benefit from all of that tangibly. So thank you. This is awesome. And hopefully we'll get to see each other again next year at the next Biohiking Conference in Austin.

Chris Rhodes:
Yeah, I love that.

Melanie Avalon:
Awesome, awesome. Well, have a good rest of your day and I will talk to you later.

Chris Rhodes:
Perfect. Thanks so much, Melanie. I really appreciate you.

Melanie Avalon:
Thanks, Chris, bye. 

Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.

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