The Fast and the Podcast [The Official SiPhox Podcast Episode 3 Part 1: Team Spotlight — Jordan Cobb]
This blog post is a combination of the story of the SiPhox 3-day fast and part 1 of my interview with Jordan Cobb, Bioengineering Intern at Siphox taking a year off from Stanford, which was recorded during the fast.
The Fast
After reading several books about aging during a vacation to New Hampshire this past Christmas, I found that I really didn’t really gain much in the way of concrete knowledge. The only common thread was calorie restriction = increased lifespan. That seems to be where the experts agree. This plus several episodes of Peter Attia’s The Drive podcast nearly convinced me to try a 3 day fast. I was finally pushed over the fence when I stumbled on this video of fellow Russian Lex Fridman fasting and making it look easy.
I won’t bore the reader with details, but it turned out to be a very pleasant experience. Notably, due to my atheism, I had been wasting several opportunities to fast every year for Jewish holidays like Yom Kippur. The upshot was that I decided to fast monthly going forward.
Five SiPhoxians (SiPhoxers?) including myself recently did a 3-day fast as part of a small informal study (we collected blood twice a day throughout). Here are their experiences in one short sentence:
Diedrik (CEO, Co-Founder): “I don’t know why Mike likes to suffer so much.”
Jordan (Intern, Stanford Bio): “Not what I expected, but proud I finished it.”
Nithin (Intern, MIT Bio/CompSci): “It really helped me to eat handfuls of salt to replenish my electrolytes every time I started feeling loopy.”
Ebrahim (Silicon Photonics Engineer): “Like a steep hike or a mountain climb, fasting is involved.”
Mike (Co-Founder): “Easier than fasting alone.”
A follow-up post is coming once we are able to analyze all the data that we collected on ourselves. One interesting anecdote — I wore a continuous glucose monitor (Abbott/Nutrisense) for this fast and saw a massive glucose spike during a basketball game while fasted:
On day 2 of the fast, we decided to finally record the next episode of the SiPhox podcast.
The Podcast
In the third episode of The Official SiPhox Podcast, Tara and Mike chat with Jordan Cobb, SiPhox’s Bioengineering Intern.
This is the first of a 3 part episode. During part 1 we discussed Jordan’s journey to biology, SiPhox, and much more:
Part 2 of 3, coming soon, will cover Jordan’s research into, use of, and partial disappointment in, the anti-aging supplement NMN. Stay tuned.
See past SiPhox podcasts here: https://medium.com/siphox-blog
Join our growing team: https://siphox.com/careers
Interested in metabolic health: See https://siphox.com/metabolic
