Barbell Shrugged - [Muscle Medicine] Fueling Your Body For Optimal Health w/ Julia Mitchell, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Coach Travis Mash #766

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

Julia Mitchell is a functional nutritionist, bison rancher, and mother of two boys. She combines expertise in Muscle-Centric Medicine®, regenerative agriculture, nutrient density, and food quality to provide personalized nutrition and wellness solutions. She is passionate about helping individuals achieve optimal health, which involves sourcing and consuming the highest quality food, including grass-fed animal proteins and other foods that improve body composition and longevity while building soil and improving land quality. Alongside her husband, she raises grass-fed bison in Alberta, practicing and promoting regenerative practices and land stewardship Work with RAPID Health Optimization Work with Julia: Website Follow Julia on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are talking to Julia Mitchell, what's very, very cool about the show. And I think you're going to love it. You'll probably hear the excitement in our voices throughout this, but we thought we were going to get in here and just be talking about nutrition and muscle centric medicine because Julia is the nutritionist for Gabrielle Lyon's practice, which is focused around muscle centric medicine. And then what actually happened was we were talking and she told us she has a herd of bison in alberta canada that she raises and then sells the meat and my mind exploded and we all turned into little five-year-olds and talked to her about raising bison

and the quality of the meat how grass plays it, and a super deep dive into the agricultural side of raising bison and everything that goes into kind of the packaging of it to make sure that she's getting the healthiest meat out to her clients. And my mind was blown. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where you are going to find a free case study of our friend Timothy Jones and how he cut his cholesterol in half and got super ripped in the process. And you can access that case study over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barrel Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Mash. The new,

would we call you an employee, Coach Travis Mash? I don't know what you call me Rapid home optimization? I don't know, team member? Man's been telling us for like 5-10 years He wants to just quit everything and come work for us And we're on that path here I don't know if that'll actually happen, but I'm glad you're on the team

Me too All the way, we have so much in common One, you have a barbell in your background This means you passed the meathead test. Just like you. So far, so good. Functional nutrition. We like that.

We're going to ask about that. And you raised bison. That's right. That's the coolest thing ever. Where do you get a bison? We're going to talk about this functional nutrition. Her ass. Right.

You got to go all the way to Alberta. And she likes the Oilers over that other team up in Alberta, Canada. You're checking lots of boxes here personally. Can you give us a little background? I'd love to dig in. And first off, just understand functional nutritionist. It's a lot of buzzwords, really mainly two of them, but they're big buckets here. I'd love to dive into what exactly that means, kind of how you start to build programs for people.

Sure. So I don't really know if it's a formal certification, like my official credential is certified nutrition specialist. So there's a couple of streams of nutrition. But the way that I was trained sort of brings elements from what we know to be functional medicine, combined with the sort of nutrition or dietetics practice and sort of fuses the two together. I knew going in when I started pursuing and like looking into how I wanted to gain my education. I didn't want to go the normal dietetics route because you end up working in like hospital settings with feeding

tubes and all that kind of stuff. That was not what I was interested in. I really wanted to be on the preventative side of that type of care, getting, setting people up for a lifetime of optimizing their nutrition, and obviously looking at diet and not only diet, but lifestyle as well. So there was a few programs in the US that sort of ticked those boxes for me. And so I pursued that stream over dietetics. And really functional nutrition is sort of nutrition, a nutrition program that is designed with the individual in mind. So how does this, how does this nutrition intervention functionally occur in person? So we're assessing all kinds of different factors when we assess what your nutritional program or intervention should be. There's no such thing as a one size fits all as it relates to functional nutrition. So we really just take sort of a whole

person approach to developing nutrition plans for people that involve, you know, their medical history, their lifestyle, their confounding factors, you know, which could be lifestyle, sleep, what your job is, how much stress you have, what your genetic predispositions are, what your current physiology looks like. So some, you know, one food may work for you, but wouldn't work for someone else because of maybe something related to their gut health or their gut microbiome. Um, so we always take into account how it functionally occurs in the individual. And that's what I would say that this specialty of a functional nutritionist is and, uh, why I really like this field of nutrition that I

practice in. Yeah. Um, and working with Dr. Lyon, I know, uh, she has this awesome term, muscle centric medicine. Um, were you, were you kind of bought into this before you started working with her? Or was she kind of like part of that learning learning process for you? Yeah. So the concept was somewhat new to me, but I feel like when I started learning and reading about this message like her muscle centric approach to health care in general it was like my mind was blown it really started connecting all of these dots for me that I had been so just take take a little step back my husband and I we raised grass-fed bison and so I've always been really interested in high-quality animal proteins and how that interfaces with human nutrition and, you know, what is the optimal diet for humans? proteins. But the way that Dr. Lyon practices sort of bridges that gap and answers a lot of

the questions that I had around, you know, how do we, there's some misinformation out there that high protein diets and high meat diets are quote unquote bad for you. But when you look at it in the context of supporting muscle health as like our target for health, it just brought everything that I was already interested in, passionate about kind of together into this holistic picture. And yeah, now I feel like I'm in the exact right place that I'm supposed to be based on everything that's happened to me in my life. So it really was like that. So the human's musculature is like the focus of the nutrition. Right. But not only nutrition, but healthcare in general. So if we look at an individual who has low muscle mass, there's probably going to be co-occurring issues, not just the muscle mass, but it could be a proxy for a lot of other things.

A paper just came out a couple days ago that basically is found using mandolin randomization, which is a type of statistical analysis that takes genetics into account. And basically, they've determined that there's a causal link between sarcopenic characteristics like low appendicular lean mass and like slow walking speed and cognitive decline so low muscle mass is basically associated with lower survivability of essentially all diseases and now i'm just reading that paper um could be linked causally to cognitive function as well which is super interesting. I wonder how it trends with like VO2 max,

you know, just like reading some of Andy's latest stuff on like, you know, with VO2 max being like probably the number one predictor of longevity, or maybe I'm wrong, or maybe he's wrong, but like, how do they turn together? I feel like you see it with VO2 max,

you see it with leg strength, you see it with muscle mass. These are all playing very well together and they're very highly correlated. So I feel like you see it with VO2 max. You see it with leg strength. You see it with muscle mass. These are all playing very well together, and they're very highly correlated. So I feel like if one suggests it, the others are also going to suggest it. You throw grip strength in there, too. Yeah, 100%. Oh, because you think you could have muscle mass without grip strength? I mean, I'm sure you could if people are like...

That's why I wear straps. Grip strength would really be like a proxy measurement for muscle mass. Probably. But if you think about it, you're an older individual and you go to, you trip and you're about to fall. If you have good grip strength, you're probably more likely to brace yourself better and soften that load, vent a fracture or whatever. I mean, we're talking, this really, really matters when we're talking about aging and when you're an older individual,

when you're bordering on that, you know, if muscle mass is the difference between your physical ability and disability, then it really matters, you know? And so we reach our peak muscle mass, you know, somewhere in our 20s 30s unfortunately so unfortunately all we're talking about is really flattening that curve down to disability and it is about eating enough dietary protein and applying that stimulus to the muscle to create an adaptation

to at least maintain the muscle mass you have i I mean, it's possible to gain muscle after 30 years old, but, um, the trend is way hard. If you start lifting in your teenage years, you missed the cheat code. It's really, really hard. Um, I, if I'd love, if you could spend a little bit of time, we just threw out like five factors to understanding longevity from grip strength to leg strength. And VO2 max being one of them. I sometimes struggle with these like predictors of longevity because it's like, well, if we have leg strength, we should just be able to get off the floor.

But then we go and look at grip strength where it's like, now you have the ability to pull yourself up. And I, I many times think about those and I'm like, where are we testing this stuff? Like is, is the last fall and the ability to like crawl over to a cabinet and pick yourself up off the ground really like the big indicator or maybe just if if we had the ability to like shuffle our legs sideways like laterally and catch ourselves wouldn't like lateral movement be a bigger indicator of longevity like i feel like there's so many you've been really thinking about this You've been in the bathtub with some wine. Am I going to shuffle to the right or to the left? And I think on one of Galpin's shows in the first season with Huberman,

he was talking about speed and power being the first thing that people lose as they age and why it's so important. It's because it's speed and power to the first thing that people lose as they as they age and why it's so important is because it's speed and power to be able to pick your leg up and go stop yourself from falling yeah so like we have like this this hand grip thing and this leg strength thing and this vo2 max thing but like maybe we should be measuring speed and power at 70 years old and that'd be a much larger indicator of, can you actually pick your foot up and get it out to the right to catch yourself?

I think that's the question too. Right. Yeah. Done. But don't speed and power rest on a foundation of strength with, which at some level rests on a foundation of muscle mass though. Like we're, we're trying to like peel off the layers and see what,

what is like the root of all of this ability. Yeah. I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization

on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Gal we're going to go through and analyze

your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to

rapidhealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidhealthreport.com and let's get back to the show. What is like the root of all this ability? Yeah, I think I'm just like so opposite of most you know yeah and i don't i don't really know so one thing i would like to say is like muscle strength and muscle mass are technically two different things so just because we have big muscles think hypertrophy bodybuilding that doesn't necessarily translate one-to-one to like some increase in strength right definitely not they're definitely not going to be weak.

You know, you're not going to be giving them a snack. They're correlated, but they're not like one-for-one. They don't mean the same thing. So part of muscular strength is also the neural muscular connection and how we send signals from the brain to the muscle to do what we want it to do. That is what muscular strength is. It's about our central nervous system to a certain degree. So I do think practicing things like agility, jumping, side to side, quick movements, all those things are actually almost, and maybe

this is why muscle mass to some degree is correlated with cognitive function, but it builds the sort of like mind muscle connection and that if you don't practice it you just don't have 100 i would even agree like in the last year like where i really focused on power come 51 and so andy listened to him on uberman made me really start to think about like looking at power like you know like i look at strength and and taking a long-term approach because the thing is too if your old dude's listening to us talk right now i can say old dude because i am one and they go out and they start jumping because they're afraid of it you know that that's not good advice either because you know they need they need to take a longer approach you got to get their tendons in a, which Andy does talk about later,

but like, you know, it's a slow approach. I started very slowly. First, make sure you're strength training, get your tendons to somewhat, you know,

ready to jump, then do some jumping. And then now I'm to the point where I'm doing like drop jumps, depth jumps. You're doing depth jumps. Yeah. Yeah. I've done some pretty cool. It's too. I'm doing like drop jumps, depth jumps. You're doing depth jumps? Yeah. Dang, dude. Yeah, I've done some pretty cool ones too.

I'm out jumping my, I got this group of really good high school athletes and I'm out jumping all of them now. Which is all that. Exciting. Does anybody ever walk in the gym and go, Mash, why are you training with these kids? And you go, I'm just, I'm crushing these kids.

I'm not just hanging out with them. I'm taking their soul. So I send them back humble. All my athletes are very humble. Then I bring in my female athletes who cannot lift them. I have no arrogant teenage boys on my team. They walk around head down

ready to go to work. Mouth shut. Yeah. I don't think it's one thing to be like hyper focused on i do think there was like a probably 10 12 different tricks that you could use in the gym that we work we work out at um we do once a year we call it like the centenarian olympics and i think peter has his own thing called like the centenarian decathlon or whatever. And it's a cluster of sort of metrics we would use. So we use like dead hang,

box jump, getting up and down off the floor, being able to deadlift your body weight, doing the Cooper test, which is a one minute mile, running a mile basically as fast as you can. Those are just a few of them. But I think there's like 10 or 12 that we'll do we'll get all the members to do once a year and it is really just to track your progress you know we have an 85 year old guy who works out with us and he's just hoping to maintain what he had last year um whereas for me i'm trying to get a little bit faster on my cooper test i'm trying to hang for longer whatever it is um i'm with you that's what i'm trying to do trying to get my vo2 max it's so exciting too because like i've never given a damn about my

vo2 max so something new uh well i mean i did the stupid i did the cooper thing you know yeah i don't want to talk about it but like let's talk about it in about a year and i'll tell you the progress i've made how about we do that so yeah but it's exciting it's something new like i'm even doing like some bandies what's it called the um i forget where you do like 15 seconds kind of hard 90 seconds or in the 60 seconds not so bad he calls it something but i can look it up anyway yeah like i've been doing his vo2 training yeah um yo i have a i have a fun question for you that i've never really heard i've never asked a question so i've never heard the answer what is the difference between bison meat and cow meat beef i don't know if there is

are there amino acid differences nutrient differences like is what is people tend to think like bison's like the cool meat and so it must be healthier for you than beef or chicken or any other meat like tastes really good but i have that thing like if i'm eating bison like i'm doing something really good for myself right now but is it really that much different yeah um i would say in in of nutrition, there are probably like a handful of key nutrients to pay attention to where they would differ. So overall calories tend to be lower per gram of bison meat to beef. And that's largely because it's lower in fat content. So if you have a hundred grams of beef and a hundred grams of bison, the bison will have less fat, thereby less calories.

So from a weight management perspective or a calorie efficiency perspective, bison would be favorable in that context. It has typically then as a result per gram more protein because you fill that weight with protein instead of fat. And then it has more favorable levels of some key nutrients like B12, iron, cholesterol, so less saturated fat. And it also has a better omega 6 to 3 profile than beef. So those would be the main qualities that I would say bison seems to be on average superior really depends on where you get your bison. Uh, you know, what, what cuts you're looking at? Cause every cut sort of is different. Um, who your butcher is, whether they take off a lot of fat or a little fat and what kind of samples you're using. But in general,

on average, I would think those are the key differences between you guys sell it do you sell your bison yeah how many bison do you grow like how big is your farm up there in alberta like i got this mental picture yeah so we've previously had had a herd uh i think it was like 160 at its largest, but right now we're just doing pretty small scale. That's so awesome. I thought you were going to say like 20. I know, he's blew all of our minds. You have 160 buffalo just running around?

You and your husband are the coolest people ever. Wait, is bison and buffalo the same thing, or are they different? Yeah, no, they're the same. They're the same thing? Bison sounds cooler. Buffalo sounds cooler. I think buffalo sounds cooler. I don't know. It sounds cooler. Buffalo sounds cooler. I think Buffalo sounds cooler.

I don't know. Really? It's on the Oregon Trail. It sounds like it's already running after you. Like, yeah. How many acres land? How many acres? And you guys, like, ride horses and do this?

Like, how does this work? What does this look like? Do you ride a horse to herd them? You can, definitely. It's not as efficient efficient and it's pretty expensive to keep horses yeah um you know my my husband likes to use and i don't do as much of this but he'll use like sometimes use a dirt bike a side by side a quad quite a bit but to tack up a horse and get out there you know it's it's yeah that's more of a style thing yeah totally i've been watching too much yellowstone i know you only do that when like the videographer shows up and you're shooting some instagram videos i got you do you have horses

uh on the ranch that my so i'll give you a little bit more context of our situation. So we don't own any land. Land is like crazy expensive everywhere. And so as young ranchers, we've never had the ability to buy our own land. So we lease from other people. So right now our bison herd is on a ranch that also raises beef, beef cattle. But we have our bison herd there kind of co-locating on the same ranch. And they have horses on the same ranch and they have horses on the ranch so um so yeah there are horses there but do we really use them to manage our bison

not really most of it is on foot and if we need to like a truck or a side by side or something i gotta ask you like so when you um like how much like how does it work is it a good is it like a pretty good business to lease and then have the cat i'm just asking for anyone listening to my max has got a farm he needs a buffalo i do i do i'm just like i got so many thoughts in my brain right now for you but yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of different ways to skin a cat for us it's the for us it's the only option right now and the good thing is the price of bison is pretty low at the moment um so to lease land and buy some animals is pretty pretty easy to get into it i guess if you were to have a landowner that'd be open to it um so yeah i guess it does work. The premium we charge for our meat to make it all and soil health and animal health as well.

So our prices kind of reflect that also. Does this mean you're really smart about grass as well to make sure that they're – Do you know a lot about the different types of grass? Is there a specific food that creates better meat in the end product that's a great question yeah i think mostly it's about diversity so rather than having them eat you know one type of grass you've got a polyculture of grasses and forbs and other types of plants and they will selectively forage for what's like most delicious and nutritious for them at any given time of year but um and my husband would be able to tell you

like what grasses they eat at what times of year like he's really hardcore about that stuff um but yeah i think the and in the literature will also sort of echo this is diversity is key to ensuring that they have the sort of like plant secondary metabolites, those like compounds that come from plants like phenolics that are, you know, diversity ensures a high level of all that stuff. Whereas if you're eating just a monoculture of a certain type of grass, they're obviously not getting the diversity. It's sort of the same as a human diet. You know, if you, if you eat all one food, you're not going to get the, the cross section of nutrients that you need. How much land do you need per cat, per bison to like, to make sure that the soil is healthy and that it continues to regenerate like how does this all work that is such a good question so it really depends on where you are and how you're managing your herd um so different areas depending on how much rain you get how productive the land is

if you live in somewhere like georgia you're going to be able to raise a lot more per acre than us up here um so it really depends on where you are there's no straightforward answer to that um but we stock you know so that we can not overgraze the land we have enough land that we can be rotationally grazing and managing basically we we consider ourselves sort of like grass farmers first and the animal is the tool to managing that grass oh yeah and so by doing by taking that approach you ensure that your land and your grass is as healthy as possible so that your animal health is sort of a byproduct of that by by you know by default awesome what about with you know giving shots or vaccinations like where do you guys stand with all that we don't do that um lucky for us in northern climates

because we get this freeze like it gets really cold where we are yeah so it's like parasites we break the life cycle of that during it It's barely livable up there in Alberta. Hell yeah. Even the parasites can't make it. Exactly. So we're at somewhere like Texas or somewhere warmer and more moist. Those, the life cycle of those worms and everything, they just won't die. And so you have to preemptively treat for stuff like that.

Right. Us has never really been an issue. We try to work the animals as little as possible. So ideally, we bring them to the ranch if we're buying them elsewhere, and then they won't see a trailer until the day they're slaughtered, or they won't see a paddock until the day they're slaughtered or they won't see a paddock until the day they're slaughtered unless we have to wean calves or something like that then you'd have to bring them all in work them and separate the calves from their mothers but that would only be once a year so we try to take i mean with bison they're they're relatively wild like we we try to ensure that they're able to express their evolutionary behaviors to the best of our ability um and that

means like very very little interaction and even the way that we sort of manage them um and move them and keep them rotating is really just like opening a gate and they'll just like yeah yeah we're not like rounding up with lasso's and trying to push them and pressure them and um what about during calving you know when they're having their calves are you guys like on watch and all that you know like um go ahead sorry no no that's a great question we they're really hands off so they do it all um wow yeah and i don't know if it's because of the conventional system you know every cattle rancher because of competition and pricing and pressure, you especially when they have calves or they're you know the females they're very strong and dominant um yeah you don't want to be anywhere

i'm not trying to get near them don't worry about that yeah so we try to just let them do their thing and if we lose a calf here or there i mean that's just mother nature it's gonna happen i had a friend in north dakota where it was like during calving season it was like every hour on the hour somebody was like getting up and checking it's like i was like dang that sounds like a lot of work i don't know a lot of work yeah uh yo i want to cycle back to the muscle centric medicine conversation here uh it's easy to talk about quantity of muscle how much muscle mass you have having a little more muscle mass typically better have a little bit less muscle massric medicine conversation here uh it's easy to talk about quantity of muscle how much muscle mass you have having a little more muscle mass typically better have a little bit less muscle mass and that conversation seems very intuitive but if you have someone who or two

people rather say they're 200 pounds 10 body fat but one is highly trained and therefore and you can comment on this they have higher quality muscle mass and you have someone who has the exact same amount of muscle mass quantitatively but but qualitatively, maybe they're, they're not in as good a shape or they have lower quality muscle mass. And I'll let you define that. Like how, how does, um, quality of muscle mass play into this conversation? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And I don't know if research has been fully flushed out in this area where there's really no way to determine muscle quality, there's no metric, you know, we, we discuss some potentials like ultrasound actually look at the muscle tissue.

But really the only way to know is like to take a muscle biopsy, which is can't really do that. They do that in the labs, but. Andy can. Yeah. which is can't really do that they do that in the labs but andy can't yeah um but i i definitely think there's something to be said there for for muscle quality in that like um if there's a lot of say intramuscular fat like think of a marbled steak yeah it's going to be a lot less efficient at utilizing energy and what they call the flux of like, you know, glucose going into the muscle and glucose being utilized out of the muscle. So I do think there's a lot of room for knowledge in this area. I am also not an expert in muscle

quality, but definitely the difference between an obese person with 100 pounds of muscle and a really fit condition person with 100 pounds of muscle is essentially exactly what you say, the quality of that muscle, which we don't, I mean, not a lot of people are out there talking about that. But it's definitely something, is it better to have muscle of any kind, even if it is somewhat marbled? That's a good question. I do think that if you, if you do things that move you toward healthy body composition, your muscle quality will sort of follow suit, but how quickly,

I don't know what that actually looks like is unclear. So it's a really good question. That's interesting because we talk about meat quality all the time, grass fed meat versus non grass fed meat, etc. It's like the it's the same meat, so to speak, coming from the same animal, but it's a different quality of meat. And so it's a different quality of meat going into our body as we're consuming it, then presumably it's a different quality of meat while it's in the animal's body. And they're actually using that meat. So there's got to be something there right well and you're totally grass-fed dude they're all grass-fed you got good muscle yeah yeah you kind of just want

to mimic like the grass-fed bison physique sort of thing or musculature but it's funny because there are people out there who do not like grass-fed meat like they want a marbled steak they perceive that to be like you know kobe beef it's like the yeah that's like the most expensive beef that exists and like ribeye ribeye tastes a little bit better than like a yeah taste and nutrition aren't always closely linked normally they're not at all yeah totally well and i find like if you go to costco not knocking costco and if you can't eat any other meat besides buying grocery store kind of conventional meat i still think you're better off than not eating meat but um if you if i go and have like a costco steak i don't think it really

tastes like anything because i'm so used to the like really strong taste of the iron and like all the compounds in the grass-fed meat i actually find it way more flavorful than like a costco that's just my kind of anecdote i eat lots and lots of costco ground beef like an enormous amount like 10 pounds a week goes down in my family. But we also just bought an eighth of a cow and the steaks that come out of that are significant. They're dreamy. I love them. Yeah. And there's a researcher named Stefan Von Vliet. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of him, but he's a badass.

He's out of Utah State University, I think think he's done a few studies looking at um actually he did uh pasture finished bison and pen finished bison a comparison and then he also just came up with a paper like a few weeks ago that was looking at uh the same for beef but essentially they measured, you know, what are the differences between grass fed, grass finished animals and grain or feedlot animals. And even like the metabolic markers between the two meats, the mitochondrial function between the two meats, the amount of oxidative stress that the feedlot animals test tested in their meat are way higher than the grass finished. And even some nutrients like vitamin E, carotene, which is a vitamin A precursor. And like I had mentioned before, omega-3s, those were all better in the grass finished group than the feedlot meat. So he's been doing some incredible comparisons between the two types of animal agriculture systems. And he comes from the perspective like grass finished meat, you know,

let's see if it is better on all kinds of levels. And you can tell when they test these two different meats that the animals that are grass finished are just healthier in general. Yeah. Talking about the omega-3 to omega-6 balance, I feel like that's as soon as somebody starts bringing up the grass-fed beef conversation, they immediately start talking about omega-3s and omega-6s is the, the actual difference if you know, between, uh, CAFO gross meat and the most beautifully raised, uh, grass fed cow or, or bison, do you, how much of a difference in omega three to six ratio? Um, is it so substantial that there's truly like an inflammatory response to eating grass-fed or non-grass-fed beef that causes problems over time?

Right. I'm about to have a heart attack if not. Yeah, I don't know if it's an inflammatory response. But in the studies that Von Vliet has done, the omega-6 to 3 ratio would be like three times higher in in pen raised or kafo meat than grass fed which means there's a higher six to three ratio so six is more dominant um so yeah there'd be like three times more six um and and and then the argument is like okay is there enough omega threes in meat that it's nutritionally relevant? And there have been some studies that show that, you know, even as much as 69 grams a day is

enough to provide a cardiovascular benefit. And so if you think about like, if you take cumulative effect of all the meat you're eating over your whole your whole life and the omega three to six rate ratio is three times higher or three times better in the grass-fed beef i do think it would have you know cumulative benefits that are from what the literature says you know could could show some benefit and there's been some longitudinal studies out of like um i think it's australia and the uk which um indicate that like contributions from past your finished meat from to the omega-3 to 6 profile is actually positive so yeah are they ever testing like cortisol like omega-3 to omega-6 is like the,

I want to say that's like the thing people recite about the differences between the beef. But I feel like if somebody came up to me and was like, this has cortisol levels that are 20 times elevated because it's in this pen with all these other- Stressed out. Stressed out. It's like the cortisol levels of somebody sitting in an office

just all day long, fake light. And then all the lights buzzed versus like the Johan Blake of humans. I know running and lean. Yeah. I know that they've measured like oxidative stress markers between the two groups and the pen group,

like the, the CAFO or feedlot groups always have higher oxidative stress markers, which would make sense. They're metabolically less healthy. They are stressed to a way higher degree. They're eating lower quality, kind of more calorie dense. They're eating like the McDonald's of food for animals. So yeah, I do. I do believe their stress markers are higher. And I mean, even if you were to ask me, like, what's the best case scenario for us to eat meat? And this is coming from a really privileged position. So I want to like preface that. Like, I don't think so. You're out there with what you're the one out there raising 120 bison. You're putting the work in,

you earned it and i and i wish everyone could have access to meat of this quality because i do think it's something that obviously is beneficial for all of us and it is how we would have accessed meat in the past um but the ideal scenario would be literally like a field harvest so the animal is shot in the field rather than put on a truck and trailer and driven to the slaughterhouse like they do. So, I mean, there are some companies like one that comes to mind is called Wild Idea and it's in South Dakota. They're a bison company that ships all over the U.S. So if you're in the U.S., got to get your bison from them.

But they do field harvests where the animals are in the field. They're literally chewing grass. Someone just drives out nice and slow in a truck and a really, really experienced marksman will just take one animal out and they'll die with like grass in their mouth still. And so their stress hormones are managed because they didn't even know what was coming and they're dying immediately. The alternative is, you know, rounding up all of the animals, picking the ones they want, loading those ones up on a trailer. They go to a slaughter house, they wait in pens. You know what I mean? If you think about how do you want end of life for an animal you're about to eat, I would much rather a field harvest scenario, but it's not

that common because of food inspection regulations and safety, food safety regulations. So there are some states that are open to this type of type of slaughter, but only few. And it's not widespread. But I mean, that's my I could wave a magic wand pie in the sky. That would be that would be how I would love to eat meat. I eat like the animal that I eat to be harvested. How often are you eating bison in a week? Every meal?

Every day, at least once. Awesome. So good. Yeah. Between that and my husband is a hunter, so we get like elk or deer. So between those three, that's pretty cool. You are doing it. Yeah.

I mean, is that his main job is raising these bison? Yeah. Or is it just a family? So that and he also does sort of consulting and works in just agriculture in general and and helps other ranchers it's sort of a soil health consultant so he does mostly agriculture related work but the bison is a big piece of it but you seem to be very you know in tune with what he's doing as well so yeah we're sort of a team i see that that's why we came together because we have so, um, you know, we have such intense common interests and common passions and yeah, our interests and what we believe in overlap so

heavily. So that's how, that's how we met. I used to own a grocery store and, and I sold his bison meat in my store. So that's how we met was like, hold on, tell me, uh, what goes on in a grocery store that I don't know about? Like, were you, goes on in a grocery store that i don't know about like were you were you at a grocery store that is obviously selling no way she's definitely at a but there's um so the store that i had i think about a grocery store a tiny little like organic corner food store like think about like a mom and pop shop that's that was what my store was it was oh it sounds awesome there i know yeah we're all coming to alberta let's go i don't have it anymore though that's like that was like a lifetime ago but um that's originally

how my husband and i met he is he was raising bison and selling the meat and um i was looking for like local producers and people who are growing really high quality food that I could bring in and sell. And he just happened to be, be one of those people. So that's amazing. I love this. Um, are you, are you guys doing like the, the full homestead thing, like the garden and all of it, or just the meat part? Yeah. You don't need that. Yeah. I w I would love love to i honestly don't really have that green of a thumb and uh just no time no let me ask you that like with so with the muscle centric medicine and the functional nutrition like you know like tell me like how important is it for your clients like strength training? Like, is it just basic strength training or is there more, sometimes it's more power focused, you know, as, as it relates to the nutrition, how does it all work together?

I'm asking for a friend. Asking for a friend. It's very individual. So it really depends what someone's goals are. We try to get, you know, if someone comes and says, I want to have more longevity, I want to lose weight. A lot of people we see

obviously want to lose weight and get to a body composition that they're happy with. That is always, I would say nine times out of 10. I love when I get clients who are like, I'm just here to build muscle mass.

Mostly men come for that. And I'm like, yes, I finally work with someone who loses a whole bunch of weight. You're going to meet head too? Yeah, exactly. But most of the time it's weight loss. But if someone comes in, like a woman who says, like, I only want to do Pilates, I will try my best to convince her that it's better to lift heavy and we'll do a lot of education on that. But ultimately it's up to lift heavy and we'll do a lot of education on that. But ultimately, it's up to her. Yeah, her choice, right. So we support people how for wherever they are and

try to work with, you know, in that case, okay, you got Pilates on board, we're going to focus heavily on dietary interventions that are support muscles that we can get that side of the coin really dialed in. And I'll work on the resistance training piece over time. And hopefully weave in a little bit more for that person as we work together. And you guys still have in this, I mean, here we are 2024 and you still have women. They're afraid to get too big or they just don't like the two mates, which we're both.

It's probably both. Yeah. It's probably. I mean, it was like what actually works the best there. Like we've all encountered similar resistance from maybe if they're not even clients or just like friends, family, that type of thing. What what conversations actually move the needle there where people go, oh, I see what you're saying. OK, I've actually changed my mind on that. And they jump on board.

Yeah. Easier said than done. Yeah, I do try to emphasize like physical ability and the ability to like carry groceries and linking it to things in life that have a tangible impact. But there's more and more research coming out. I don't know if you guys have your finger on the pulse of like resistance training literature right now, but there's some really good stuff that's emerging to support resistance training that hasn't really been there previously. A lot of research on exercise has been around cardio based exercise. And so the literature pool on resistance training has been quite limited. I don't know, but it's like the bodybuilders were doing, have been doing something right for a really long time, but the science hasn't really recognized or respected that for a lot, a lot of

years. So I do feel like it's just coming out, but I mean, there's a study that I can think of recently with menopausal women who there were three groups, one lifted, you know, lightweight, high rep. The second group was heavyweight, low rep. And the third was multiple sets of, um, like medium. The body's helping. Yeah. Yeah. And like all groups obviously benefited body composition wise, but there was definitely a more significant effect for those women who lifted heavier. Yeah. So, so I think studies like that, like that helping us really emphasize that the more mechanical load you can put on your muscle, the better the adaptation you're going to get from it. People need to recognize that. And also, you're only going to get from your body. I like to say

this in clinic a lot. Your body's only going to give you what you ask of it. Right. That tends to really hit home for people. You know, if you're not asking much of yourself, your body's not going to give you much either. So, yeah, if you want to live a life of longevity and capacity, you sort of have to be asking as much as you possibly can from your body now in order to build that and maintain it over time. So basically that study is more like the more powerlifting really than say bodybuilding, like bodybuilding would be more of that last one, the moderate weight, you know, for reps. So like, so going heavy does have, you know, I get obviously to clarify minus the drugs that are normally associated with both of those sports, but like just strength training to get strong, you know, strength training to get just muscle. But so going heavy does.

And like, what are some of the markers that were better for the people that were going heavy? Like, what was the differences? It's more lean mass, less fat mass. They were measuring two things, body composition change and physical capacity and both improved in all the groups. But there was a little bit of a benefit to those for body composition and, and strength for those who lifted heavier, obviously if you're lifting heavier, you're going to get stronger. But if you're lifting heavier, you're also going to have a more favorable body composition. I mean, plus bone mass mass even like you didn't say

and touch bone mass yeah bone mass like connective tissue like there was i mean i feel like there's so many people like you you can you can go out there and you can like take the study that matches your belief or you can pick the study that is going to give you the most results and so like there's no doubt by adding by focusing on i'm not saying everyone should be out there maxing out all the time but by adding you know some progressive overload you get so many benefits that people don't talk about and like longevity i feel like we did a few months ago a show on longevity and like it should be i think that word is misleading in general. I don't want to be 90 and can't walk. I'd rather be 80 and moving like I normally do.

And so I don't want to just live a long time. I want to live a long time and be able to do the things I do. And that's the difference between lifespan and healthspan. And actually, Gabrielle is going to start probably talking a little bit more about this idea of muscle span. So starting to train really young and, and sort of that peak muscle mass being as high as possible, because as the current, you want to have a flat flattened curve as long as possible as well.

So there is this idea of, of viewing your muscle as having a life and a lifespan and making that as long as possible as well, which means starting training pretty young, which is somewhat controversial as well. Yeah. And maintaining it well into old age. Do you have kids?

Yeah, I have two little boys. They are three and four. Oh, nice. What's their training program? They just come to the gym with us and watch us work out, basically. Right. The culture of it. And the, you know, the pattern of showing up and doing it.

So we try to include them as much as possible, really. And they can, they warm up with us. They, whatever, as long as we're not doing heavy barbells or double unders where someone could get really hurt. Sometimes they, they do come and do it with us or whatever. Yeah. That's exactly the way all my kids started. They started by watching them and then their heroes become my athletes. And so then they just follow suit. do it with us or whatever totally yeah that's exactly the way all my kids started they started

by watching them and then their heroes become my athletes and so then they just follow suit exactly oh it's awesome the lady who owns this gym she has an 11 year old son and he does crushes all the watts with us it's the coolest thing to watch mother son uh partner workouts and stuff i'm like goals i want my kids to be working out with me and and and enjoy it so i hope that's what i'm laying the foundation for so we'll see my old basement set up just for that yeah it's their playground but it's fitness right they don't think it's i would take any advice you have on how to make that happen if you guys have kids the key is make it fun you know like

downstairs we have like a wall that's like um you know now we're putting adding in the rock climbing and then we got the pegboards and then we've got the monkey bar monkey bars then we have the barbells we got the sleds we just make it's their playground but it's not you know to me it's their fitness so then they watch me do lifts and then i have my athletes come over and teach them how to snatch and clean and jerk like all my kids my five-year-old daughter my seven-year-old son my nine-year-old son they can all snatch clean and jerk they can do all you know with great technique of course and so yeah it's gonna make it fun yeah i actually started a huge battle with adelaide my six-year-old

daughter who could do the splits first right now she dominates me oh yeah i'm coming for her she has no idea how hard i will train to take her lunch money oh that that should be sold for this this cowboy she thinks she can just casually go about doing the splits in front of me without me internally going, I'm going to kick your ass. And you have no idea what's coming. That's crazy. Do you think you'll be able to do the splits? Oh, I'm working very hard on a daily basis. I have no doubt.

I know you. So I have no doubt. But I could work as hard. I mean, I could work every day. I could do three days. It's not happening. There's no split happening. You get closer a little bit every day.

Yeah. Can you share like, what are you doing every day to make that happen? You're just trying to do splits a little deeper every day. Or are you working on like other. First off, I hired a coach. No way.

Oh, I'm, I will never let my kids ever think that they can beat me in something. As soon as they get closer, it's game on. We're going at it. It's going to be fun. Training is my favorite thing in the whole world. You've got a stretchy coach

to beat your six-year-old daughter. Yeah. Well, for the last year, I've been trying to run a sub-six minute mile. I'm like 6'18", 6'19", the last two miles that I've run. In order to shave the last two miles that i've run and i just in order to

shave the last whatever seconds off i will have to lose parts of my life that i the the trade-offs are not worth the the hitting the goal um but now my daughter comes pretty good gymnastics all the time and uh she's like dad watch this and she tries to do like, uh, the splits that she can sort of do them each direction. She's like, you can't do it. I'm like, say what I've made my whole life out of people saying you can't do this physical thing.

And I'm going to go do it right now. So I, are you close, uh, closer than I was two weeks ago. Sweet. Magnolia can crush. So I will tell you what the training looks like.

Uh, on Mondays I run sprints and I superset it with stretching, like legit, like very painful, hardcore stretching. I do lots of I get down into a on my back and I do good mornings at like loaded good mornings and as deep of a split as I could possibly stand. And each time I do like the eccentric down, I pause at the bottom. I deal with a lot of pain and then I stand up and then I spread my feet out further. And then I go down and I sit in a lot of pain and then I stand up and spread my feet out further each time. So I do that in between sprints. And then i stand up and spread my feet out further each time um i so i i do that in between sprints um and then i do the same thing i've just shortened my my strength training so i'll do like upper push and pull but in between each thing i'm i'm doing some sort of really

gnarly stretching and then um wednesdays are like very long stretching days because I just have them as like recovery. And then essentially the same thing on Thursdays and Fridays, except lower body strength training and like VO2 max training. So I'm just doing longer efforts of painful crap. But I will do the splits. I don't know when because I haven't really hit like a time where i went oh this is working but i know it's working it just takes time i'm i'm coming after and as i would add one thing one advice i can't believe here i am coach smash giving advice on stretching but the one thing i would say is i love that you're adding a load to it now get into that load

and take deep breaths yeah it's a game changer like i've watched kids go trying to do weightlifting with me you can't get the good positions and so they do their overhead squats or the front squats and take deep breaths yeah and it's insane i'm sure it has something to do with the probably and all that but that's probably like the first thing that i'll realize when i'll go oh oh it's working where i'll be able to do all of this stuff in a like more zenned way um right now it it's like the the it's high pain um everything i didn't know this show was gonna like you know end with giving people advice on how to get mobile but it's awesome it's great about

yeah inspiring if you want something you gotta yeah well i mean you spend uh i i've mostly just spent the last three decades like trying to be insanely strong and then all of a sudden like your body i feel like my body is stronger than my body needs it to be or wants it to be, if that makes sense. Like loading up a heavy back squat right now is, in my opinion, like really dumb. Like I, it just doesn't feel that great anymore. Can you imagine you're saying that? No, I am on the show. Like, yeah, I never feel real dumb then no no

like if your body is like totally cool with it then you should totally do it like my it's not the idea of me doing like a five by five back squat at 315 pounds like that was just like waking up no way on a monday morning i agree like and do like there was just no way that wasn't a thing in my life and then um now putting that kind of weight out like i haven't lifted a barbell in over a year almost i'm sure i don't know if i get my identity would be so lost yeah i need to get past that but like i'm like right between you guys like i switched like all velocity based training i still do lots of barbell stuff, but it's all power-based. And it feels fantastic.

It feels great. It's not too heavy, but it's still... Right. Yeah. Those flex units are awesome. Yeah, I love them. So if you do your 1RM at 0.5, you can still see things trend, and you don't get anywhere near getting hurt.

Yeah, velocity-based PR is a rad. Yeah, shout out, Jim Ware. things trend and you don't get anywhere near getting hurt. Like I love. Yeah. Yeah. Velocity based PR is a rad. Yeah. Shout out to where. So yeah, I think the other thing was I started training at a lifetime. So I had all these toys around me that I haven't had.

So bad. I had, I mean, I've been in my garage training for almost like four years straight. And then for the last year year i've been in a lifetime and it's like i've got all the glute machines i've got all the dumbbells go up to like 150 so i can do anything uh with dumbbells and they're just easier on my joints like they're just uh they've got all the hammer strength stuff um the guy actually at the front desk, like makes fun of me.

Cause I keep re upping. Like when I first started going there, I was like, there's no way I'm joining a lifetime fitness. Like this is, this is against my meathead to be going to this corporate gym. Just because I'm trained in dungeons for forever. Like any niceties was just making me soft.

So this beautiful giant thing was like, like any niceties was just making me soft. So this beautiful giant thing was like, so then I started going cause the gymnastics studios right next door. So, and then all of a sudden I was paying drop-ins like two, three days a week. And he was like, I'll just give you the cheap rate, man. But now both the kids go to the, the, the little daycare thing and they love that. And then now Ashton's in the guys like you went from like 50 bucks a month and now you're like 200 bucks a month here. I'm like. So I guess you're like, I owned a CrossFit where I charged that for one person.

Now we had like this basically a auto mechanic stop. Yeah, it's got everything. Once you have all the toys,'s it's much easier to like not like cables that i feel like cables are so incredible like you've got resistance throughout the entire range of motion yeah the eccentric portions you can get big stretches in muscle like it's it's all it's so awesome it's just all cool and if you if you don't do that for an extremely long time and then you go back to it you're like well i'm never going back to this barbell thing but then i'll go back into some sort of barbell thing that matters in a little while

like um it probably won't be like super heavy back squats but like there's there's lots and lots of ways to go get jacked. Let me give our audience one tip. Has anybody here tried the pendulum squat? It's kind of a newer leg machine. It's called the pendulum. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a funny story about that. That thing will wreck you, but in a good way.

You don't need much weight. You could do it probably with no weight, and it'll wreck you. We were training at the Dragon's Lir in vegas oh and they had dragons there too and uh um they had one there and many times when i'm in like lifetime or whatever i'm never concerned about like is there too much weight on the machine when I walk up to it? Like I can typically live. Oh, you better be careful. Yeah.

When you walk into the dragon's lair, you're also there with all of the almost pro bodybuilders. So this guy has like a lot of weight on the pendulum squat machine. And I don't really want that thing is hard. And I just like jumped in thinking like that guy can do it. I do get pinned. I got straight up pinned in a bodybuilder in Dragon's Lair. Had to come over and save me.

No, swear to God. I was buried. It was like, I took it off the pens and I was like, Oh, this isn't good. And then of course I just went down anyways,

thinking I'll figure this thing out on the way down and then this dude like giant meathead man like runs over and i'm like i'll just leave i'm not strong enough to be in this place anymore anyway before you think we're complete me has the reason it works it just allows you to get the full range of motion at the knee is unlike anything there's nothing else on earth that can let you get that much stretch on the quads and so like it'll wreck you and the way it biomechanically the way it works the the weight is at the back of the machine so a little goes a long ways and like you can i use only two plates and like i mean i'm talking about you know i think that's what was on there 90 pounds

and i was like what's two plates no no i had to work to the rush like i literally had to work towards two plates and i squatted a thousand pounds juliet so you don't think we're sissies like i don't think you're sissies it was intense anyway yeah so lots of stuff on this show right from bison to pendulum squats i had to google that because i didn't know what it was but now i see it's the truth yeah yeah i'm getting one for my house i'm gonna have huge quads at 51 with a big vo2 max and maybe some splits. There you go. I'm working. That's well-rounded.

Julia, where can the people find you? Well, if they want to work with me through Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. So drgabriellelyon.com. I have an Instagram. It's called Julia, the nutritionist. I don't post very often, but sometimes I do. And otherwise, nowhere.

And Alberta cheering for the Edmonton Oilers and raising bison. Can we buy your bison? Do you ship to the United States? We can't ship to the US just because our meat is inspected only provincially. So basically the equivalent of like a state inspection versus a national. What did you say about Chile? Nationally. Oh, nationally.

Internationally. I can't ship internationally. Sorry. Gotcha. But if you are listening to this and you are in Alberta somewhere, we definitely work in the southern Alberta, kind of up to central Alberta, Edmonton area. We definitely ship or can get our bison to those areas um and yeah we typically sell in like half or whole animal uh quantities just to eliminate like weighing out individual stakes and handing them to people yeah buy in big quantities and fill their freezers so that's typically how we operate that's fantastic yeah and so if you're

interested you can reach out to me on ig send me a dm and i can add you to our mailing list so that's typically how we operate that's fantastic yeah and so if you're interested you can reach out to me on ig send me a dm and i can add you to our mailing list phenomenal trump smash um you can read all my art goals at jimware.com but if you want to work with me you can go to rapid health but if you if you're here in North Carolina and you want to come hang out with me, there's also you can go to Rise Endorsed Sports. Super fun working with

your guys. It's so much fun. There it is. Doug Larson. You bet. I'm on Instagram. Douglas E. Larson. Julia, thank you for coming on the show. Anytime we're talking muscle and protein, I'm all for it. I appreciate you being here. Thanks for having me. I thought we were just going to sit here. Yeah. Thanks for coming on here.

I thought we were just going to sit here and talk about nutrition for an hour and then pre-show you dropped that you raised bison and it was just game over. Then a little, it's like a little five-year-old

in me came out and we were just going to talk about the coolest thing. No. So thanks for coming out. In Alberta, you guys let me know and we'll take you for a trip.

You have no idea how bad I want to get to Alberta. Why? Because the best hockey team in the world is there. I don't care about the four Panthers. They are not. I'll come in July. Yeah, we'll go to Banff. Banff is what Alberta's for. Banff, yes.

Banff is really beautiful. If you're in a place where it's super hot in the summer then that's the time to come. August, September because it's way colder up here. September is really nice actually. Right now would be the time how cold does it get um you're gonna die like minus 30 40 celsius are you talking well at 40 does it matter yeah no oh really yeah so it's minus 40 Fahrenheit is the same as minus 40 Celsius.

So that's where they like. You'll be fine, Travis. No good deal. I'll die. You won't. I'm going to Iceland in like three weeks and it's going to take me a year to thaw out. Yeah, but you can jump in.

They got all those hot springs up there. Yeah. So jump in a volcano, you know. They're everywhere. And it only gets like minus it'll only be minus 30 for like you know, at max weeks total. I'll tell my wife. I can't wait to see

We're going to go herd some buffalo. Yeah. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. And make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com forward slash results. That is where our friend Timothy Jones has a case study up on how he cut his cholesterol in half, got super shredded. And you can read that case study over at RapidHealthReport.com forward slash result. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.