S2E1 A guide to the Fasting-Mimicking Diet with Dr Valter Longo

Geoff Allix  00:00 

Hi, everyone. I’m Geoff Allix, and I’d like to officially welcome you to Season Two of the Living Well with MS podcast. Thanks to all our listeners for making our first season such a big success. In season two, we will release a new episode every three weeks that will introduce you to fascinating people and ideas to broaden your perspective on how to live a better, healthier life with MS and now on with the show. Support for the Living Well with MS podcast is provided by Overcoming MS. A global charity registered in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, whose mission is to educate, support and empower people with MS in evidence based lifestyle and medication choices that can improve their health outcomes. Please visit our website at www.overcomingms.org to learn more about our work and hear directly from people around the world, about the positive impact Overcoming MS has made on their lives. Now on to today’s episode. Today, we’re pleased to welcome a very special guest to Living Well with MS. Professor Valter Longo, the scientists behind the fast mimicking diet. Professor Longo is a bio-gerontologist and cell biologist and serves as a professor at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and as the director of the USC Logetivity Institute. He is the creator of the fasting mimicking diet, a meal program that claims to mimic the effects of periodic fasting. Now, fasting mimicking diets are not one of the Seven Pillars of OMS, however, there is a lot of evidence behind them and it’s possible in the future, this evidence could be strong enough to suggest that they may come into the mainstream OMS protocol. Despite the implication, this is a juicy and timely topic and so on to my chat with Professor Longo. Thank you for joining us, Professor Longo, before we dive into your dietary recommendations, could you enlighten us a bit about today’s rising fascination with fasting diets? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  02:05 

Yes, I think that people do realise that fasting is still part or it was part of many religions, and it’s still a part of many others and so I think that people have always wondered why. And now, science is beginning to show that, in fact, fasting, in particular forms of fasting, I think that we’re going to find out that fasting can be both good and bad, we already finding that out. But like with all treatments, that if you do it in a certain way for a certain length of time, that this could be very beneficial and so I think that lots of people are beginning to realise that. I think most people are probably not as aware of the problems as they are aware of the of the benefits. And so that often changes so that it doesn’t end up as a fashionable thing, periodic professional, or temporary, fashionable thing and it ends up being a real therapy available in many, many clinics around the world. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  03:37 

And so your diets are often called fasting mimicking diet. So how does fasting mimicking, differentiate? How is that different from fasting? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  03:50 

So we started with water only fasting, of course, I started with water only fasting many years ago. I mean, several decades ago in the early ’90s, first in bacteria, then yeast, and eventually, through mice, we got to patients, and realised that maybe around 10-11 years ago, that patients didn’t want to fast water only and their oncologist did not want their patients to undergo water only fasting. So we developed fasting mimicking diets, we’d get funding from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute on Aging to do that and and so the idea was, can we get the benefit, the changes that occur during water only fasting, while patients are allowed to eat something very special, but certainly they’re not to eat what they considered relatively normal food. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  04:56 

Okay, there’s another term that comes up as well is Blue Zones. Could you explain what Blue Zones are? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  05:03 

Blue Zones are areas around the world that have been designated mostly by National Geographic and Dan Buettner as areas containing particular features, which include longevity, extreme longevity and a high number of centenarians. Now the original word comes from Sardinia, Italy, where some of my colleagues were researching the the prevalence of centenarians in certain areas around the world. And they ended up using a blue pen to circle the area and that’s, at least I’ve been told by them, that’s what it means 

 
 

Geoff Allix  05:59 

Just the color of the pen that we’re using, it could have been any color. 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  06:03 

Yeah, I think if they had used the red pen it would have been the red zones. But it happened to be blue. So there you go. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  06:13 

So the people in the Blue Zones live longer, statistically and…. 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  06:19 

They don’t necessarily live longer, because, you know, the blue zone criteria is not necessarily about living longer for the population overall, but it may have to do with the number of centenarians, frequency it may have to do with the number of male centenarians or female centenarians etc. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  06:44 

Okay, but is there a correlation between those zones are between the centenarians and people who are fasting or fasting mimicking? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  06:53 

Not really no, the fasting and fasting mimicking, they had been pretty much abandoned by most people, including, with the exception of some of the more extreme religious groups. I don’t even mean the Muslims, because you know, the Ramadan, the practice right now is just, you know, fasting during the day, which is not really a fast, it is a form of fasting, but what we’re talking about is going three, four or five days or longer, with no food, or very little food and that’s rarely seen anywhere now, in almost any religion or any group of people. So yeah, you don’t see that anymore. You do in centenarians in this longevity zones, you often do see people not eating dinner, or having a very light dinner and I will be surprised, I don’t know, that has been formally investigated, but I would be surprised if most of them did not do a 12 hour or a little bit longer, fasting period every night. The centenarians seem to be fairly disciplined and I think in most cases, they are not used to eating as we do in the United States, and probably in the UK, for you know, 14,15, 16 hours a day. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  08:40 

Yeah, I think the modern day so I’ve travelled to the US a lot and it does seem to be that food is available at all times. So that you never need to be hungry at all, you just instantly get food. 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  08:52 

Yeah, the American lists of studies indicate the American’s now eat for about over 15 hours a day. And, so yeah, so this is the amount of food but also the length of feeding has been increasing steadily for decades. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  09:10 

And so in your research, have you found that fasting mimicking can help people live longer? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  09:18 

Well, nobody’s ever done longevity study. I think that that will take decades to do even if you took people that were truly advanced stages and so people are now considering those studies. So the fasting mimicking diet makes mice live longer. You know, if you take it in, you give it to them in middle age, the mice live longer, and they’re, you know, the cancer goes down about 45% and you know, cognitive decline is delayed and inflammation is delayed, etc. In people, you see something very consistent with that so we saw that, you know, reduction in inflammation, we see metabolic changes that are very positive; so lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, lower fasting glucose. And so overall, if you look at it if somebody was to do that fairly consistently, and by that we mean three or four times a year for five days. I mean, at least based on what we’ve seen in mice and human trials, it’d be hard to imagine how they will not live longer, but that’s a speculation. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  10:48 

Okay, so this is, this podcast is specifically for people with MS. So can it help people with MS live better? If not necessarily longer? Would their prognosis likely be better? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  11:04 

Well, I mean, we’ve done a clinical trial with with MS, this is in collaboration, we charted that hospital in Berlin and, this was published together with our mouse studies, studying and Multiple Sclerosis, or at least, you know, Encephalomyelitis, which is a mouse model for Multiple Sclerosis. And, you know, in people, the people, the clinicians, they report an improvement in quality of life by doing a single cycle of a week long of a fasting mimicking diet. So, in mice it worked very well, and there was a reduction of the symptoms in the great majority of the mice and about 20% returned to normal so the immunity was gone and so we think is very promising. So now we have several multicentered trials that are being developed, one is in Italy, and involves seven hospitals and in the United States, in USC in Los Angeles, they’re also very interested in starting a trial. So the difference I think, is the size, you know the original trial was only about 48 patients that completed the trial and now we’re looking at about 300 patients  and we’re looking at and so you know, this is a much more rigorous trial, much more ambitious trial, and also be much more conclusive. If we get to the end of it, and we see the difference then I think, you know, it’s always good to do more trials, but certainly, at that point that this could be widely adopted. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  13:10 

And so there’s lots of different types of fasting mimicking coming around at the moment. There’s one that’s quite popular in the UK, because of BBC Doctor did a Five Two diet so you eat normally for five days of a week? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  13:26 

And by way, there’s not a fasting mimicking diet, you know? Of course, I know Michael Mosley very well and, yeah, is that a fasting mimicking diet he is basically saying, you know, eat a lot less or nothing for one or two days, two days a week, but the fasting mimicking properties have to do with a very precise modification of the diet to cause changes, cellular changes that our equivalent to those caused by water only fasting. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  13:57 

So the 5-2 or the, the 16,-8 is the other one. 

 
 

14:01 

So 16-8 is a bad idea, for multiple reasons. 16-8 is a bad idea because of gallstone formation, we know that if you go 16 hours of fasting every day, you have two times higher chance of needing to have your gallbladder removed and we also have multiple epidemiological studies now showing the people that skip breakfast and most people that do 16-8 will skip breakfast and not only they don’t live longer, but they live shorter and they have increased cardiovascular disease. So yeah, so I think 16-8 is a bad idea but I think that 12 hours on, 12 hours off, so 12 and 12 of feeding and fasting, that that seems to be very good and not associated with any problems so I’d recommend that, but I highly discourage 16-8 unless it’s for a brief period, and there is a real need and there is a real reason to do that. But in the long run, it’s dangerous. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  15:13 

Okay, so the key benefits come from doing perhaps four, five day fasting mimicking, so four sets of five consecutive days per year. 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  15:29 

I mean, you know, the 5-2 , that is two days a week, that could be beneficial, I don’t know, I mean, Michelle Harvey, and others have been looking at it and there’s a number of studies that look very promising. So I think that’s interesting and that should be continued and we’ll see what it shows. But basically, if you do say one day, particularly, as Michael Mosley has been suggesting, and then you go back to the normal diet into one more day, and the time of the week, there’s really not enough, you don’t even enter really fasting response mode, you enter a little bit of it, but not very much, you know, because most of the changes occur after a couple of days and your brain, for example, fully enters a starvation response mode after two to three days. So, so yeah, this is why we’re saying particularly with neurodegenerative diseases and autoimmune disorders, you want to push the system to the level where it’s fully switched into a ketogenic state and it’s burning fat as fuel, it’s burning fatty acids, and ketone bodies as fuel. Yeah, so that’s what we’re trying to do. So but but the main thing, really, the main message is, let’s not improvise, because that’s what everybody is trying to do, you know, everybody’s improvising, everybody’s got a different opinion. And they usually those things end up in disaster, you know, they end up being many more people hurt by this than benefited from it. So our point has been, you know, let’s be considerate of the medical system, it’s not there by mistake, it’s been developing for hundreds of years and you know, there is, there is a way a correct way of doing it, which is you need to have animal studies, you have to have clinical studies, you have to pay attention to epidemiological studies and then, and then you do it. Now, at the same time, you know,  you’re in a patient advocacy group, I’ve always been unhappy with the colleagues that say; well, you know, this kind of test is so much that it’s going to take us 30 years to do it. So I’ve always said, If a patient with a say, multiple sclerosis patient, if a multiple sclerosis patient right now we finish a 48 patient trial, we will say and we finished, we did the animal studies and other groups have shown very similar results, so it looks very promising. But we need, you know, the 300 people trial, and that 300 people trial, we haven’t even started. So it may take us, you know, six months to start it and then it’s gonna take us two years. So the point is, let’s find a compromise where we say if the patient can wait, wait, if the patient can not wait, then you should talk to your neurologist and say, okay, there is already a trial, it’s already been completed, the diet seems to be safe. Is this something that I should consider? I think it’s a very good way to approach it and the doctor may say no, and the doctors may say, yes, and I think that, that would be what we recommend? So anyways, just a long, long answer about this. But I think it was very important to say, 

 
 

Geoff Allix  19:05 

No, that’s fine. That’s similar to so the Overcoming MS. The dietary part of that is essentially, no dairy, low saturated fat, no meat except fish. So there’s certain sort of rules and there’s a lot of evidence behind this. I put this to my neurologist, and he said, Well, it’s not proven to help MS. And it probably never will be because it’s quite hard to do double blind trials on diet. 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  19:36 

Yeah, I completely disagree with this. I completely disagree with this. We’re doing that we’ve been doing it for years. We’re doing it for cancer for Alzheimer’s, you know, so I think that you’re never going to get the perfect trial no matter what you do, even with drugs. And you know if you show that a particular diet or fasting mimicking diet or works in a randomized placebo controlled trial, even though the placebo, some people might understand that is, may not be the fasting mimicking diet or whatever, I think that’s very important now is a completely inconclusive now, but if you do it two or three times, and they say the diet you just described, and you randomize, and you show over and over the deaths results in a better outcome better, slower progression, etc, etc. Now, I think it is perfectly fine to say this recommendation now, if we could do a placebo control, double blind study, you know, it is possible that we will no longer be statistically significant, but you do what you can and if that shows, the if there shows efficacy, or if there shows that the group is on it is doing better than you say, a try to do this. And that in this is associated with with with improved symptoms. And then, you know, let’s see what we were able to do. And now people are not forced to do it, it’s up to them, you can say it was not, there was not a double blinded study. But you know, this is exactly the kind of arguments I get into it, there seems to be more in favor of the medical establishment then in favor of the patient. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  21:37 

Yeah, to refer, my neurologist did say at the end, he said, it’s unlikely to be proven, however, there’s a good chance that it will be beneficial for your multiple sclerosis, and also it will reduce cardiovascular risks, it’s probably likely to reduce cancer risks. And there’s a lot of probably things and on the downside, he said, It won’t do you any harm. But you might miss cheese. So that was easy, basically said it shouldn’t do any harm. 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  22:11 

Again, I think that, you know, people are not stupid, you can explain to them that it was not double blinded, that there is a chance that, that the explanation may not be the change in the diet. And as long as that is explained, it is their choice, even if it didn’t help with cardiovascular disease and etc. etc., even if it was just something that let’s say that you remove carrots from the diet, I’m just joking now. And they’re shown to to be beneficial to MS patients in multiple trials that are randomized. There will be already something that the doctors could discuss with their patients saying, you know, this is what these trials are showing kind of like happen for caffeine and Parkinson’s disease, right. Multiple studies showing that the association between coffee use and Parkinson now yeah, of course, you know, eventually, it might turn out that it wasn’t really the coffee, it wasn’t really the caffeine, it was something else. But But I think that it’s, it’s appropriate to explain it to the patient and to say, a since it is not a new drug, since the doctor is allowed to say, you know, drink more coffee or less coffee, to discuss it in a very balanced way. And inform the patient about what it is that is being known as being found. Now most doctors are not trained in nutrition. And and they don’t feel comfortable talking about and this is the real reason why lots of the times they don’t want to get into it not so much because they don’t think it would be beneficial. But because they’ve never been trained on it. And and it is a territory that is very tricky for them. And and I think it’d be better for a doctor that hasn’t been trained on nutrition to say, I just don’t know, maybe it’s perfectly fine to say I don’t know, you know, maybe there’s somebody out there that knows better. They can read the papers and understand them better, but I don’t know. Yeah, that will be I think, a much better way to go for medical doctors that they come in and effective nutrition and diseases. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  24:41 

And so, in between if I’m doing four or five day fasts over a year in between those fasts, can I eat anything I want or should I be conscious of what I’m eating between fasts? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  24:54 

Well, I mean, obviously you need to be conscious of what you’re eating, but obviously also are lots of people are not going to be converted. And in. So, you know, most people, you can tell them whatever you want about the daily diet, there’s ideal, and they’re gonna continue to do whatever it is that they do. I mean, in the United States after the smoking was clearly shown to be responsible for many different cancers, only about half of the smokers quit smoking. And, and there was a clear message as it gets, you know, this kills you, and yet half of the people kept smoking. So yeah, so I would say that there’s a higher percentage of people than 50%, that are now willing to change your diet. And for those, certainly, you know, think the fasting mimicking diets are a very good idea. In but of course, for those that can change your diet, you know, I wrote my, in my book, in the longevity diet, and all the profits go to research, by the way, and charity. And, you know, in the book, I describe the ideal everyday diet, and the use of the fasting mimicking diet. And I also should be done on a need to do a basis, right, so that people shouldn’t just say, Oh, it’s good, it’s been shown clinically to be good. So I’m just going to do it every 15 days. Now, I think it should be done only three or four times a year on average by most people. And, you know, if somebody has multiple sclerosis, we can now certainly recommend the fasting mimicking diet for multiple sclerosis. But neurologists can say, hey, let me look at the data. Let me look at the mouse data, let me look at the clinical trial. And let me look at the safety data or the fasting mimicking diet, which I think now has been done by over 150,000 people and make a decision, maybe, you know, this earshot, see what happens. And that could be the decision of the neurologist, but only the neurologists will be able to make the decision. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  27:01 

So your long activity that you mentioned the book, does that cover really all of the steps that someone needs to go through how to go about fasting, what they should eat between fasts and so on? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  27:16 

Yeah, I mean, it covers all the steps, Al so basically says, you know, people should fast with with a clinically proven fasting mimicking diets. And there is one there is available in the UK is called Prolon. You know, again, I donate everything to charity. And so I don’t make a penny out of this. But I think that, as I was mentioning earlier, too, it is important that we don’t forget that. I’ll give you an example. There was a multiple sclerosis patient in Italy, the doctor, the Italian doctor, per at least from what when newspapers were describing a three week fasting, water only fasting diet. She ended up dying. And, you know, nobody knows where should i But certainly, the report talks about bleeding, internal bleeding. And yeah, so then that’s my point about improvising. Even if the book is there, in reading from a book, I think it’s for everyday diet is perfectly fine. There is no danger. By when you get to fasting mimicking diets, I think it’s better to go with a kit. It’s relatively inexpensive, particularly if somebody’s going to do it a few times a year. So yeah, much better to go that way. And I say that in the book, you know, so I tell people, you know, you do I mean, the book certainly does be enough to give you enough information to for at least for a doctor to come up with the fasting mimicking diet, but we strongly strongly discourage it. Also, because is, you know, the, the actual was being tested clinical is much more complex than what I described in the book. So So I think that people should do their own daily diet, but when it comes to the fasting, mimicking diet, they should probably go with it. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  29:23 

So so this so what is the Prolon diet kit? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  29:27 

Yeah, the Prolon is a five day fasting mimicking diet. That’s the one that has been tested in multiple clinical trials. And, you know, the safety record is extremely good. We recently collected data from 400 doctors representing 4000 patients and, and, you know, sooner we’re going to report on all the side effects and all the, the, you know, problems that we’re seeing in this population and, and it looks very good So they’re really only minor problems. And, and that’s really what you want, you know, you want to first do no harm and make sure that the diet is safe. And an awfully, you know, we’re, we’re I think now there are going to be 42 clinical trials that are either running or will start soon enough. And and, you know, so we to be sure, and each trial is going to test a different type of fasting mimicking diet, for example, the one for multiple sclerosis last seven days, and it’s got a very particular composition. And and, yeah, so I think that that’s a eventually people will have to, to if it works. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  30:57 

So what sort of things would I if I if I buy a Prolon diet kit? What sort of things will I be eating and drinking? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  31:04 

Yeah, the Prolon kit has me it’s all vegan. Now, I think it’s gluten free. It has lots of vegetable soups, lots of nuts, bars contain almonds and hazelnuts, etc, etc. And chips in certain other supplements like algal oil. And so that’s, that’s the composition of it, we try to make it fairly straightforward. But in fact, it’s, it is fascinating in that, so it does cause the changes that you normally see when you do or only fasting. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  31:52 

But there’s also some beneficial nutrients in there as well. 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  31:56 

There is also beneficial nutrients, you know, so for example, we just published a paper and inflammatory bowel disease and other autoimmune disorder. And, and we shown that they had an inflammatory component, human inflammatory component, most of the study was in mice. And they showed that if you if you did what, when the mice were put on a water only fasting, the gut became more leaky. And lots of the effects that we saw the beneficial effects that we saw with the fasting mimicking diet, we did not see with the water only fasting. And so we concluded that most likely the prebiotic content of the of the vegetables in the fasting mimicking diet where we knew that there was a major reprogramming of the of the microbial flora in the in the gut. And that was very important for the effects that we saw on this outer immunity. And so our conclusion was that the type of not just of fasting but the type of ingredients that are used, which, by the way, come from the Blue Zones, right? So there was the reasoning, let’s just combine fasting with the diets, everybody agrees they can’t come on denominator that everybody agrees this is extremely healthy for you. And yeah, so, there was the reasoning and it paid off, because I think that that help Additionally, in addition to the water fasting component helped with the dampening of the inflammation of the autoimmunity list in the mice, but also in people right. So, we have multiple papers now showing in humans clear decrease in C-reactive protein and systemic inflammation. And now also leukocytosis you know, the white blood cells going up in response to inflammation and in people they reduced by the cycles of the fasting mimicking diet. So certainly even Prolon which is not specifically designed for multiple sclerosis or auto immunities is already showing effects and systemic inflammation and very good and fairly potent ones. Yeah, now, we have to demonstrate or this test whether this could work in reducing order immunity in in various diseases. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  34:36 

So that so in the future, maybe there’ll be specific Prolon diets for specific conditions. 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  34:43 

It wouldn’t be a Prolon diet in a Prolon is just a stands for prolonged longevity is really about, you know, going after fundamental changes in the body to keep you as healthy as possible. So Prolon is really going after the aging process, but the fasting mimicking diet so that you know now are being developed for our communities for Alzheimer for cardiovascular disease for cancer, etc, etc. Yeah, each one is different somewhere in the last four days a very low calorie. So in the last seven days, higher calories, some of the last five days and you know, even higher calories. Yeah, so in each in each for each disease and news, we’re, we’re developing or we have developed a different fasting mimicking diet. Now that addresses the what we know about that particular disease. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  35:35 

And is that something we’d like to hear about soon? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  35:38 

Yes, I think very soon. The plan is to begin to, to have fasting mimicking diets that are already addressing, not the disease because the regulatory agencies do not allow that until there is a say the FDA does not allow or anyone to say This can prevent or treat the disease until you have a you have a formal process with the FDA and assuming the UK is similar. But we’re what we’re developing is a series of fasting mimicking diets that address specific problems like inflammation, for example. And, yeah, so those, so the problem at the core of the disease before the diseases there, so those are these are going to be available very soon. And hopefully in the next six months or so. But yeah, for the ones that are specifically proven to help treat diseases, then we have to wait for the results of this larger randomized clinical trials. 

 
 

Geoff Allix  36:51 

Okay, that’s been very interesting stuff. So as a starting point of people, so people who are following OMS, they, they’re probably already not eating meat, except seafood. They will have cut out dairy, they would have cut out saturated fats or still have things like olive oil, but but reducing saturated fat substantially and removing fried food from their diet. So that’s, that’s where most people following OMS would be but for those people it would it be worthwhile. There initially having a look at the longer term diet book, considering proline and maybe speaking to the doctors as well. Is that the best advice? 

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  37:36 

Yes, I think so. So they read the book, and get a sense for you know, why different foods affect the aging process affect inflammation, etc. These are eaten every day. And they get a sense for you know, what happens when you do a periodic fasting, mimicking diet, like Prolon? And then then Yeah, certainly talk to your neurologist. If you can now wait for the clinical trials to be over, then you know that there will be a dis good discussion to have, is it safe enough that I give it a shot and see what happens to me. And then in combination with the standard of care, by the way, so now removing any standard of care, so any standard drugs that are already being given to the patient, so the trial, by the way, is we’re doing it together with drugs. So this is not replacing drugs, this is combining with drugs, both in cancer and in multiple sclerosis, we’re doing it with drugs. And so but it doesn’t mean eventually we might not be able to show that even without drugs, this is effective, at least in the prevention, or maybe the recurrence of the disease, etc, etc. So yeah, so but still, lots of lots of trials going on. And we just have to wait and see. But the good news is love love that people can do inpatients can do right 

 
 

Geoff Allix  39:00 

now. Okay, that’s fantastic. Thank you very much for joining us for the podcast.  

 
 

Professor Valter Longo  39:04 

You’re very welcome.  

 
 

Geoff Allix  39:09 

With that, I’d like to thank you all for listening to this episode of living well with MS. Remember that there is a wealth of information at overcomingms.org including show notes, and an archive of all living well with MS episodes. Once again, that’s overcomingms.org. There you can also find OMS friendly recipes and exercise tips. Connect with other OMSers in your local area through our OMS circles program, and learn about the latest research going on in the MS world generally and related to OMS. Specifically, I encourage you to register on the site and stay informed about the latest news and updates. I also encourage you to subscribe to this podcast, so you never miss an episode. And please feel free to share it with others who might find it a value. Let us know what you think. About the podcast by leaving a review. And if you have ideas for future episodes, we’d love to hear from you. So please contact us via our website overcoming ms.org. Thanks again for listening, and for joining me on this journey to Overcoming MS and living well with multiple sclerosis. I’m Geoff Allix And I’ll see you next time.