#336 FDA Bans NMN Update & Why You Need Insulin in the Brain /w Inka Land

Siim Land (0:00)

Hey, everyone, welcome back to the channel. My name is Siim Land, and this is my wife Inka.

Last week, we talked about a particular study that showed what was the main diet of the Okinawans during the times that they did live longer, and what is the difference with what they now eat and the Western influences. We did get a lot of different comments on that video as well about, yeah, obviously, it's not like a perfect study, and we don't actually know exactly what the Okinawans ate. What we do know is that, yeah, nowadays, they just eat a lot more of these Western-processed influenced foods that tend to have a lot more fats and more processed food intake.

Inka Land (0:42)

Yeah, there were actually very good comments, and I encourage for people, if they are interested in learning about these longevity diets, really go and do their research, then I think we should all always keep in mind that when we look at whatever individual dietary pattern, the studies are epidemiological, there is not controlled research trials. We do them retrospectively often. So you may get researchers looking at the data from some, I don't know, statistical database from 50 years ago, and of course, how they were reporting the diet at the time were not accurate. There might be some falsification, fabrication, even we don't know about those things. So we just basically looked into one article, keep in mind, we didn't do a big literal review.

And most likely no one at the time really ate precisely in that way, because what they do is they look at the big population data and what is the mainstream diet and who lived longer. What is the association there?

Siim Land (1:59)

Yeah, and I think that one key idea is still, but they did live, or a lot of those health benefits of their longevity came from the period of the war, where there were food shortages and they didn't eat probably that many calories and they ate just less, which is probably one of the biggest contributors to that.

And of course, the food quality was better as well, but from the lifespan aspect, then just the calorie moderation is probably the key aspect. So you can probably see very different results, or I think you probably see very similar results on a somewhat different diet if the calories were to be controlled, and the food quality was somewhat around the same. Even the macros would be different, but the food quality of whole foods and minimally processed tends to be the main commonality of all these diets that have health benefits and longevity benefits.

Inka Land (3:04)

If you're interested in these longevity diets, then definitely look into the research in, well, the Blue Zone diets, but also Mind Diet, Mediterranean Side Diet, Dutch Diets, and just like overall picture is always the best picture. And we just wanted to address the fact that we are doing research for our books at the moment, and then we bring these insights, what we find is not a comprehensive view yet on, and it will be then reviewed in the book.

Siim Land (3:37)

Yeah, and we'll talk about that later in this episode, but before that, we'll start with probably the biggest news of the week or month or even like the year, in terms of, I don't know, supplement, the supplement world and the biohacking world, which would be that the FDA, the US FDA has came out with a statement that said that they're gonna ban the use of nicotinamide mononucleotide or NMN as a dietary supplement. So they claim that it doesn't meet the definitions of a dietary supplement. And yeah, many people think that it leads to the road where they have to need like a prescription to use it. You have to get a prescription from a doctor to use NMN. And yeah, like I also made a video about it explaining, and pretty much the FDA wasn't like really interested in NMN up until the point where this company, Metrobiotech, came out. Or they actually, Metrobiotech, which is this company that creates their own NMN. It's like a beta NMN, like a crystallized version of it, which called MIB626. And-

Crystalized, oh, Crystal NMN.

And yeah, they pretty much came out with their own form of NMN that they did some studies with, showed improvements in people. And actually, the Metrobotic itself was the company that wanted FDA to regulate NMN and take it off the market and turn it into a pharmaceutical because they have their own patented version of the beta NMN. And last year in 2021 already, the Metrobotic pretty much filed like application or a statement to FDA that they want the NMN to be turned into like a pharmaceutical drug, basically, and to take it off the market. So which is like pretty like a bad move or...