Barbell Shrugged - Protein and Amino Acids to Become Combat Ready w/ Dr Jess Gwin, Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash #809

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Dr. Jess Gwin is a PhD in Nutritional Science and post-doctoral fellowship focused on muscle physiology and protein metabolism. Researcher in protein/essential amino acids (EAAs) nutrition, muscle preservation, and energy deficiency. Advocate for using data-driven nutrition to extend health span and performance. Work With Us: Arétē by RAPID Health Optimization Links: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram

Shrude family this week on Barbell Shrug Dr. Jess Gwynn is coming in and we're talking about three things everybody loves. And in one, we're going to take a little bit deeper dive into but protein and muscle. Who doesn't love those? Just a big old hunk and steak. Then you eat it. Then you go get jacked. It's the greatest thing in the entire world.

And we're going to take a little bit deeper dive into amino acids, which is something that is always very interesting to me. I think you're going to enjoy her take as well. As always, friends, make sure you get over to Rapid Health Report. That is where Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin, we're doing a free lab, lifestyle, and performance analysis. You're going to access that report over at rapid health report.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Marvellousra.

I'm Anders Warner, Doug Larson, coach Travis Mash, Dr. Jess Gwynn. Adam, one of my favorite places in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth. Welcome to the show. Today we're talking about protein and muscle and amino acids. That's what all meatheads like. there's like a all we need is more reason to eat more meat and lift more weights and everyone on barbell shrug will love you yeah welcome home but you work with the the high stress environment's military population i'd love to hear just like a call it a little background on yourself and how

you got into this line of work sure sure first of all thanks for the opportunity to be on the show it's a great privilege we always like the opportunity to share kind of the work that we do So I am out of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, and I'm a nutrition physiologist by way of civilian government scientists. And my primary job here within the military nutrition division is to study soldier problem sets and try to come up with the biomedical evidence basis for nutrition interventions, just to really understand the nutritional requirements our soldiers have and then also try to enhance performance and wellness throughout that population. Yeah.

So, yep, that's kind of the overarching theme of my work. I feel like you are climbing an uphill battle because when military people say that they're going to go eat, they call it a mess hall. And I've never gone out to dinner with my wife on a date night and to like a nice place with good food and called it a mess hall. No. Right. That feels like it's going to be really challenging to get some people to eat high quality,

nutritionally dense food at a mess hall. Actually, on that note, how has that evolved over the years? You have any insight into like how the nutrition and food and whatnot supplied by the military for recruits, boot camps, and wherever else has changed and evolved over the years? I'd imagine 20 years ago, 50 years ago, it wasn't. quite as healthy. Hopefully it's gotten healthier over time as we've learned more about nutrition and nutrition science and training and fueling our bodies. Yes, absolutely. So really the roots of some nutrition science does begin in the military realm, especially feeding troops and understanding

nutrient requirements. If you trace that back into the 40s and 50s, our institute and really the Natick Soldier System Center that is just west of Boston here is really some of the root area with Ansel Keys work and some of the early rations developed for World War II. So a lot of that history is rich here. As far as garrison feeding or the mess hall feeding, we have a partnership with the Combat Feeding Division, and they are really focused on kind of the actual development of recipes and the development of food that's supplied,

what that looks like in the garrison environment, or these defects that are otherwise known as mess halls, as well. Our job is really to understand nutrition requirements beyond what the public or civilian population requires and then bring that back and, you know, advise our colleagues over in that combat feeding division who actually develop the recipes, test palatibility, develop those combat ration platforms. As you mentioned, there's been a lot of food technology changes over the last 40 years as well. We can actually develop foods that are shelf stable over time. You'll have conversations, anecdotal discussions with some of the soldiers. We have soldiers that come in and

voluntarily participate in our research. And we like to ask some questions about those foods and hear their stories. And certainly there are times where the shelf-stable foods are, you know, not as, you know, relatable as a fresh food item. So that is where it starts to kind of deviate or change. But when you look at the rations develop themselves and you kind of track, every 10 years, there's a lot of progress that's been made. So you see more commercial products that you would see at a grocery store are now, because of technology advancements, included in those rations. So some of it is not that different. You can go out and see some of the bars, some of the food items. We have commercial products that are in those rations. But you're

absolutely right. If you take a look at the last 40 years, the technology has driven a major change and what the food that is available for soldiers out in the field. What types of soldiers do you work with? Is it just like, is it all kinds, special forces? Yeah, great, great question, Travis. So our institute does the whole spectrum. So we work with basic trainees that are showing up for their first duty day at initial military training or now AIT all the way up to end user driven projects from the

Arsoft community. So it really depends on, you know, some of our portfolio is balanced from a requirement. We have policies that need to be informed by research in a very traditional way, but then we also have end users that, you know, they want to understand what the calorie requirements are of their field training exercise. You know, what kind of hydration status is a ranger in during June going through the swamp phase versus the winter, you know, cold winters in November. So those are just like different examples. I'm certainly fairly on the newer side, the younger side of being an employee at

Eusarium. I've been there for eight years, but we have colleagues that have been there for 40 years on, and they can certainly speak to some of those really intricate, specialized populations. Again, if there's a problem set that the military branches have and they want to bring to our institute, that's our primary. That's super cool. I know you've mentioned right before the show you're mentioning doing research on protein because you're trying to attenuate muscle loss with whether people like deployed overseas for six months or something like that where they're just trying to hang on to muscle mass and not lose body composition. Is that very common? Is it kind of like being in season for like as a football player where you're like kind of trying to maintain for six months while you're overseas and trying to not necessarily get bigger, stronger, faster while you're over there, trying to just like hold on to the athleticism that

you were deployed with? Yeah, that's a great way to phrase it. Sometimes I think you have to be careful about the different populations, but the ones that we're really focused on with mitigating muscle loss are those folks that are going through what we call high, arduous training environments where physical activity goes through the roof. They have energy expenditures on the order of 4,000 to 6,000 calories a day. And then even if they're consuming all of the rations that are designed to be provided three at a time, which is about 3,600 calories. As you, you know, do the math on that, they're in a calorie deficit. So we do see that in some deployed environments.

Certainly that's not always the case. If you're deployed and you have access to the mess hall or the defect, you know, you're going to have opportunities to refeed. But we also see it in the training environment. So I'm talking about like a ranger school scenario, seer school, different types of field training exercises that by design are trying to mimic the environment of warfare. So you have these physical stressors of increased physical activity. We're moving down a simulated range. We're trying to cross terrain that's difficult in cold environments or extremely hot environments. So those energy

expenditures, I'll just use Ranger's School for an example, in those different phases, are driving a loss in muscle because they're in an energy deficit. So it's similar to some in-season athletes, and I do agree that we oftentimes try to equate athletes to soldier athletes or tactical athletes, but it's going to depend on the occupation or the MOS of the service member. But yeah, we studied protein as one potential nutrition countermeasure. So we know that the mission set, the requirements of being a soldier on the front lines, is, oftentimes going to include those energy expenditures that are extremely high, limited recovery time, and limited time to consume food, also coupled with appetite depression.

So if you're in that stress state, you're in high altitude, we see appetite go down. We see the time available to eat goes down. And additionally, you don't always want to carry all the food that you're provided because if you're choosing between carrying extra rounds or extra food, you're probably going to choose to carry extra rounds. So that's generally the problem set that my area of research has focused on. I came on board in 2018 under Stefan Pasiakos, and this energy deficit problem has been kind of a tail as old of time for soldiers. We generally see it's unavoidable. There will be some sort of energy deficit when folks are moving in these high arduous environments. Dietary protein,

from the weight loss world seems to have a protective effect for muscle. And we can kind of get into the weeds on why that might be. But just to kind of, yeah, lay the overview of why we study this problem. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garland and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers,

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Like why, you know, why does it have that protective, I guess, element there to preserving muscle? Yeah, great, great question. So we draw definitely on some of the lessons from the clinical setting. So hospitalizations and catabolic stress models, those have been studied for the past 30 years, primarily in a lot of the work of Dr. Robert Wolf, Dr. Arnie Ferando, Stu Phillips, those folks have been studying this stress model with hospitalized patients, and what they've really demonstrated is that muscle becomes a reserve. So when we are in a stress state, and particularly when we're not eating enough dietary protein, muscle becomes the reserve of amino acids.

It creates a metabolic triage where muscle no longer is the priority. We want to maintain immune function. We want to maintain first order protein synthesis in the gut. We want to maintain to maintain liver turnover. So amino acids are going to be broken down in that stress state. They then go back out into blood circulation and then are used for that wound healing, for, again, immune function, gut protein synthesis, et cetera. And so same thing in the soldier case. It becomes this reservoir, you know, if we're going through stress,

the body has to keep all that protein synthesis from a whole body status perspective online. So muscle starts to break down and serve as those amino acid resources. The other pieces, I know you all are very aware of this, but muscle is pretty expensive from an energy perspective to keep remodeled and keep online. So from an evolutionary perspective, reducing muscle mass then becomes less of an energy strain. So we have twofold. One, we have greater needs at the larger body level, but then we also,

So maybe now the body's sensing the environment around, you know, dropping some muscle becomes an energy preservation piece. Wow. So you're saying so dropping some muscle might be, as far as when you're in certain circumstances, might be the better way to go about things. I think when the body, the way to kind of couch that is when the body is in stress and there's no reassurance that energy is coming in from the diet that it's going to prioritize other in states

like immune function, liver protein synthesis, before maintaining, for example, your quad, your muscle. You have anything to spare, it's going to be used first. Got it. All right. I mean, when it starts to break down the muscle or not, and like, you know, what, how is that as far as like your, the other like the hormonal levels or like your just your mood and like what happens then.

Yeah, that's great, Travis. I love this question because it starts to get into the complexity of this problem set. Yes. When we monitor these soldiers, we monitor these catabolic states, we also see not only the muscle gets broken down because of the amino acid strain, but we also know, as you said, we have these other systems driving hormonal response. hormonal production, you know, may be influenced by over-training, over-stress, inflammation. Sleep restriction is a huge piece of this soldier problem set that we're starting to tap into. So those are all going to feed into reductions in hormonal management. So we do see drops in sex-based steroid production.

Then when we bring re-feeding back on, there's classic ranger study where they've measured, that. They see, you know, they go through the starvation phase where their food intake is reduced quite rapidly and extensively, and then they pull them back into a refeating break, and that hormonal production will come back on board. But as you can imagine, it takes time to catch back up for the actual protein synthesis and whole body protein balance to be in a state of homeostasis. And I would also say age plays a part of that, too. As they get older, that won't be the, necessarily be the case, at least not as, it won't be the same, not for an older soldier. Absolutely. And that's, several of my colleagues are interested in tapping into that.

We're seeing our service member, our actual retention of aging service members becoming a problem or an interest area. You know, how do we better support these longer career-based service members? You know, what are they experiencing when they go through repeated operational stressors? So we have some long-term studies. one in particular led by Dr. Harris Lieberman, where he's been tracking special forces selection and assessment and then the retention of those individuals over five and ten years. So stay tuned. That data is continuing to come out. He's been running that study for about 10 to 15 years now. I know you've done some research on essential amino acids versus BCAAs versus full protein, et cetera.

What have you found with kind of the differences and nuances there about what's effective, what's a kind of a waste of money, et cetera? Right, right. I love this question. So disclaimer, certainly a whole protein person as a recommendation at the outset, but there are tools in the toolbox and essential amino acids definitely represent one of those tools. A little backstory on why we got into this essential amino acid work in the first place, again, referencing Dr. Arnie Ferando and Dr. Robert Wolfe and Stefan Pasiaco says,

my mentors in this space. But they really demonstrated the anabolic potential of essential amino acids as a potent muscle protein synthetic stimulator. And we know that essential amino acids are key because they have to be consumed in the diet. So again, we're borrowing a little bit from the clinical space where these essential amino acids showed some promising effects at the muscle level to maintain anabolic potential in stress states. And when I came on as a postdoc in 2018, our first effort was to understand, do essential amino acids work in this soldier problem set, specifically energy deficiency, and what's their utility?

And so we conducted a series of studies where we're trying to understand, you know, with the end goal of let's make a product that can be included in a combat ration. Let's have a blueprint formulation, so food items that we would see at the grocery store and the GNC can then be pushed through food technology and become an actual stable product that would be used in a ration. So essential amino acids, I think the literature is extremely clear when we're using free form available amino acids, they do reflect a potent antibiotic stimulus. So especially after resistance training or in other exercise.

stimulus, you see a robust effect of essential amino acids to turn on muscle protein synthesis. And then also, we are interested in whole body protein measures. Again, because of that metabolic triage question of, you know, what does the whole body look like versus just the muscle, essential amino acids also provide a protective effect at the whole body level, essentially resulting in better net protein balance. I know some of your listeners are probably well aware of what net protein balance is, but when I referenced that, it's going to be really focused on the equation of whole-body protein synthesis combined with whole-body protein breakdown. Those collectively together are changing protein turnover. And when we provide essential

amino acids at greater amounts than typically are, you know, maybe consumed in sports nutrition recommendations on the order of 24 grams of essential amino acids, we do see that there's a protective effect. Whole body protein balance goes up, and muscle protein synthesis is stimulated at a sufficient amount. So essential amino acids, and, you know, in our lab and our hands do seem to provide a good tool to stimulate protein status and preserve muscle response during energy deficits. We can get into the weeds of the studies if we want to chat about those. But they're really designed to be a tool. So if you have a soldier moving from one location to another, we want an easily consumed food product. You know, is that a bar? Is that a

powder? That's a, you know, a question of, you know, how can we create the most variety in their food intake and provide these different foods because, you know, the more food they can take on, the more energy they're consuming, the better. So we have, you know, worked our way through these studies. We've designed a general amount of dose that we think is ideal, which is around 24 grams of essential amino acids. My colleague, Ligmargolys, is really focused on carbohydrate fueling. As you all know, that's another piece of this performance puzzle.

So we also looked at, you know, whether we add carbohydrates to these essential amino acids, is there a beneficial effect or is more essential amino acids? is better. Just because, again, if we're trying to ask a service member to take time and can consume food, maybe we get more bang for our buck if we have a product that delivers carbohydrates and essential amino acids. So when you said the 24 grams of essential amino acids, you're talking about the ideal amount you want to put like into a single bar for a soldier, is that we saying? Okay. Yes. And the product that we've kind of, you know, the formulation that has been

helpful in achieving that is an essential amino acid enriched way. So, again, this is a very specialized food formulation for a specific need. However, there are several studies that have been investigated enhancing way protein or enhancing another form of isolated protein with a free form of essential amino acid. Again, we're trying to squeeze out like this performance amount of optimization. This is not something I'm always suggesting someone off the street is consuming. They're pretty expensive. you're starting to give up other nutrients of interest if you're only going to free-form products.

But yeah, in our hands and in our problem set here, the essential amino acids have proven to be a useful tool. What would be like the difference? I mean, I'm like a world-class expert in protein bars, lifelong advocate, the mid-100, least healthy, best tasting, like a cold. quest bar in an airport what's kind of like the what would be the difference between what you guys are working on and say just kind of like a regular

protein bar or like MREs that look at that guy that one's so not that great. Not that much it's kind of the white stuff on the outside, the icing. Yeah, this guy I do. I got to get my sensual me no asses in. From like the

yeah, from the current kind of like stock protein bar or MRE, what is kind of the big difference that you guys are working on? The shelf stability. So if I had the food technologist online here, she would really, really cite the fact that the malliard reaction, so this is where amino acids interact with sugars that are in the bars, and eventually it's caused a browning effect. So we're not even at the point of taste. We're at how do we make this bar shelf stable so that it can be in a ration. For the listeners who aren't aware, certainly if service members are listening, they live this

life, these rations can be stored for up to three years at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. So they have to be shelf stable. They're kept in cachets. You know, we need to be able to mobilize this food source essentially as fast as we can when the need arises. So the long history of shelf stable rations, I can't do it justice. If you're interested in that, I can definitely share some names from the combat feeding division. They do a really good job. And then they have to walk this line between delivering something that's palatable to the masses. So right now, the shelf stability piece is the question for the traditional ration platform, which is the MRE. Now we do have additional rations that may be coming online in the next few years or so, where we are pulling

commercially available products, like, you know, core power, for example, I should give a disclaimer. There is no, this is a disclaimer. There is no endorsement of any of these food items. Carrie, I'm, you know, covering this now. I'm using these as an example of what would be available. This is not an endorsement of core power for a ration item. But, you know, go to the grocery store, see some of these items.

The idea is then to, you know, can we pull these from? you know, manufactured items that are available and build out recovery, supplemental ration platforms. Yeah. I mean, what about the deal? I know, like, as a, obviously, what I'm about to say is nothing like being a soldier, but when you're about to compete, say, you know, as an athlete, like, it's harder to eat things anyway, because, you know, stress is up, you know, the, your cortisol is up.

And so what is your thought process in that, you know, a soldier has just like a minute to get some food in they're so stressed like there has to be an element of like they got how they're going to do this without throwing up you know yeah Travis that's great this is all bringing to light the additional factors in this problem set so if someone's appetite is down we know high altitude I think I mentioned that reduces appetite we know that some individuals in the heat you know also just that performance factor if you know you're moving into an operational environment, you may not be hungry, or if you have only a short amount of time and you've been in a highly active environment, you may not have a large drive in your food intake.

So, again, I think that it's important to highlight that these ration developers really try to think of all of this. They try to devise products that are easy to consume. So there's fruit puree pouches to get carbohydrates. They'll be, you know, have supplemental carbohydrate in a beverage powder. And then they're always trying to test food items, you know, so that people can, you know, mix and match. And they're hopefully intended to be consumed in their entirety if they have time. But they're also trying to balance this component of the individual, which is very difficult when I tip my hat to them all the time because we just come up with the evidence, the science of, hey, you should really try to include this as a blueprint.

You know, this is a nutrient of interest. Please try to include it. But they have to deal with the logistics. I mean, these rations are dropped from helicopters. They have to be a certain weight in size because they get packed out into the soldier's packs. You know, if they have a seven-day ration, all of that is intended to be carried by the person. There's so many elements. And the other thing is, if they taste really good, I'm eating them all on day one.

By day seven, I'm starving again. Yeah, but those dudes have got bullets flat over their head, man. It's not as easy as it sounds. They're like, shit, I just want to get home, you know. When you put these protocols together, I would imagine you're in Massachusetts. Everything is mostly stable. You're like in a clinic trying to have the most repeatable results. And then there's people overseas.

And then there's people out on mission. and the stress levels in each of those locations is wildly different. Are there different protocols, or are you just giving kind of like broad ranges for people to follow as best practices? How do you kind of handle the technical side of putting those together so that each soldier actually knows what to do in specific scenarios? Great question. And I think it hits two different pieces. One, our translation from our intended policy and our intended protocol or requirements that we hope goes out to the soldier and how that's applied in their mission environment. And then also the science side of it. So what you kind of described is this unique, you know, what we call sometimes bench to battlefield model.

And I borrow that from one of my colleagues, Lee Margolis, uses that phrase all the time. But what we try to do is try to optimize in the lab, really try to understand the mechanism, you know, within the confines of a science model or a science protocol, which does, you know, lead us to a general range of, you know, recommendation, and then take that to the field setting. So we kind of have incremental study designs where eventually a product is taken out into the field setting. So that study I just mentioned, as far as, like, developing the essential amino acid, you know, recommendation for a ration product. It went through four in-house, excuse me, three in-house studies.

We had all that tight control. We reduced the noise. And it really led us to this ideal dosing. Then we worked with the food product developers. They developed some prototype ration products. Those then went out to an Arctic Ski March training environment, where now we're providing these rations in combination with their traditional rations and testing the utility of that product. And when you look at how that all hashed out, there's some variability in what, you know,

we started out with as a, you know, our ideal product, and then how that had to flex to become one that would be used in a field setting. So I think you bring up a really great point for science across the board. We, you know, traditionally, we use this reduction method in the lab. We have all of this control. And then ultimately, once we get to a population level, interoperative, prevention, there's going to be some wiggle room and maybe less of, you know, clarity on what that looks like. So the goal is always to keep moving the needle forward, understanding that from the lab to the field, those recommendations do have to shift. And then the feedback is then to observe the change. You know, if we make a recommendation, we make a change in a training

environment. I mean, for example, go back to Ranger School. It's kind of a nice model, but they changed the ration allocation to increase energy for the soldiers to consume as students. And they wanted to make sure, you know, that the training environment didn't really change as far as, like, perceived stress on the individual. And what they showed is that adding another ration in the early 90s didn't really affect the stress of the experience. But it did help reduce the negative. effects on the physiology so that when that soldier came out of that environment, the negative effects were kind of mitigated if that helps make sense. Yeah. Yeah, how do they find a balance

between like very obviously in combat, you're not always going to have all the food that you want all the time or all the water that you need all the time. And that's just a part of the deal. Like you need to be able to perform at a high level whether you're nourished or not, whether you're slept or not. And so obviously that has to be a part of your training. But at the same time, the military is incentivized to keep all their soldiers as healthy as possible all the time. That way, when they actually are deployed, they're at their best. What's the balance there? Yeah, Doug, that's a great question.

I think that's something my colleagues and I talk about a lot. These stressors are unavoidable. So we just try to mitigate the negative effects. We know I'll keep using the energy deficit state as the example, because that's where most of my work has landed. So we know that problem set. The solution is eat more food. But as you said, we see time and time again, this is a decades-old problem, centuries-old problem probably, right?

So eat more food is simple answer, but the delivery of that answer is now, you know, our problem. So how do we use, you know, combinations essential amino acid and rich products would be one example. We try to increase overall food intake. how can we, you know, provide energy-dense foods, so more energy in a smaller package, so they consume fewer number of bars but eat more calories. So that's like the actual nuts and bolts of that problem. But yeah, we're well aware that some of these stressors and problems don't go away,

but can we focus on reducing the negative effects as much as possible? I'll use another example. we just wrapped up a sleep restriction study a few years ago a couple of studies came online showing the negative effects of sleep deprivation and sleep restriction. So sleep deprivation being total sleep loss, sleep restriction being approximately four hours of sleep per night, reduces muscle protein synthesis on the order of 18% of the synthetic response. So that's, you know, a huge deal when we think about that happening over and over again. Well, in our soldiers, it's a very common experience to have a sleep restricted state. You go and you even look at soldiers in garrison, so this is when they're not in the deployed environment.

They're back at the installation because of the way that their job is designed, a lot of duty days and their duty hours are also causing them to be sleep restricted. So we came to the lab, we said, well, what can we do from a nutrition perspective? I was very interested to see if there's a protective effect of protein in the recovery period. So this data is not published yet, but we did, you know, reproduce the findings of those previous labs that showed that four nights of sleep restriction reduces muscle protein synthesis. And then we used a protein refeating during recovery, you know, mimicking when a soldier comes out of the field using a current recommendation of 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. And that does rescue muscle protein synthesis back up to baseline values. So again, kind of hitting home that

these stressors don't go away. We're always going to have missions where we're going to have environments where the mission calls. So if we're called to have soldiers in the Arctic, we will go to the Arctic. So the nutrition requirements have to flex on that. If they're called to fight in the heat, you know, our thermal mountain medicine division does an excellent job studying heat and understanding how performance and acclamation changes in those environments. I'm curious when it comes to training these guys, you know, like, you know, you know that sleep deprivation is going to be a part of what they're about to go through. Is it best to train them under very optimal conditions so that you go there and you have this, you know,

I think it was, Dan, Dan Garner talks a lot about, and even Chris, I always forget his last name. Very. Yeah. It's like, he talks about going there and having, like, you know, this built-up amount in excess. So, like, you know, you have something to give, you know. So you're so conditioned and so, like, recovered. You go into the field and now you're getting four hours of sleep a night, but your body is so well-conditioned. you're better off to do that. So what is better to prepare? Yeah, Travis, that's a great question.

And that's definitely something my peers we've tried to pivot to because we know intervening in the mission or intervening in the training environment is likely not going to be as effective as we would hope it to be. Just because of logistics. I also should disclose to, you know, I'm not a service member. I have not been through any of these trainings. I'm not a cadre member designing them. So So they're very intentionally designed training environments, you know, to bring the soldier home safely and also accomplish the mission. So keeping all of that in mind that these environments are intentional. Yeah. Now, yes, what is our job on the front end to prepare folks going into that environment?

What does that look like? Walter Reed, Army Institute of Research, is a renowned sleep research institute that has focused a lot on sleep banking. So, as you kind of mentioned, sleep banking, going into that environment, what does that look like? How do naps improve? What we're starting to do with some of our colleagues and collaborators there is to pair the physiology from a nutrition intervention perspective and try to marry these interventions up. So, you know, the next phase for the current study I just mentioned is, you know, how do we look at sleep extension, for example? Sleep extension with a combination of making sure protein intake is above adequate, closer to optimal. You know, how do we include our, increase our bang for the buck?

Right. It's a lot of variables. Play chess. I feel like what you're doing. Yeah. On the, you mentioned kind of working with the Rangers on this. When I think of all of those special operators, really in like the top half percent of performers. most of those guys are probably somewhere around 27, 28 years old, and they don't listen that well.

They're like really, really good, but super ego-driven people. And how is this messaging kind of taken by them or has it just gotten to a point where everybody knows this following what you say is going to help them perform better? Are they pretty open to it or do you get pushback? yeah that's that's a great question so again i'll give the disclaimer i'm a scientist back in the lab so we we try to be a fly on the wall in most of these environments so i'm actually never the one giving the direct guidance um the army has had a positive shift towards human performance support they changed their fitness test uh so yeah so so there's a there's a large positive culture and understanding at least from my opinion and perspective

There's a positive culture and shift towards human performance. It's not perfect, right? No large, you know, change and policy shift is going to be perfect. But at least in my time, over the last, you know, again, short amount of time, we are getting more calls to support guidance like Field Manual 7-22, which provides guidance towards you've heard of the holistic health and wellness program. Those are supposed to be policy entities that help guide these clinical. help provide a requirement because generally in the Army structure, again, as a civilian, you know, understanding this from my perspective, if the requirement isn't there, it's really hard to have a leg to stand on to make an intervention or make a change to the environment. And so our job, again, is to just provide the evidence basis of, you know, this environment provides this stress and this is a potential countermeasure. So when we start to talk about the individual service member, the individual service member, individual warfighter. We have a lot of great professionals that are in those H2F spaces.

They're in there as contractors coming from the civilian world. The nutritionists, the physical therapist, the strength and conditioning coaches, the athletic trainers. Those are the folks on the ground day to day interacting with these soldiers to help them, you know, move forward and have support and help and wellness as their career progresses. So I can't speak to the direct feedback from a soldier on some of these items, but I can say, you know, as we go out into the field setting and we go kind of, you know, provide the characterization of some of these settings for those professionals. There seems to be a positive shift. Yeah. Joe, can you walk us through some of the studies you've done and like shows some of the data, the actual results,

like who you were testing, what you were tracking, what were you kind of hoping for, your hypotheses, some of your favors here? Sure, sure. So I'll just call on some of the essential amino acid items. So in the lab, as I mentioned earlier, we have the opportunity to have the highly controlled studies. So we'll take kind of the gold standard approaches that are used in some of the more, you know, what some of your followers have probably listened to in the past using stable isotope

tracers. So we'll bring folks into the lab. We will use a full feed diet where our, Our dietitians have, you know, designed to the individual, the macronutrient breakdown. So we do a full feed, controlled study diet. If it's an energy restriction, we've reduced food intake or we've increased physical activity in combination or with a reduction of food intake. Right now we have one running looking at this repeated exposure of operational stress. So today, just finished up, we have volunteers completing the study tomorrow.

they go through 11 days where 72 hours they receive a restricted food intake that reduces their food intake by 30% also increases their physical activity. So we've got a 60% energy deficit. This is similar to what we've measured in the field environment where we've gone out, collected rations from soldiers measured their energy expenditure by collecting urine samples and using doubly labeled water isotopes. So we use that 60% energy deficit, and then we're looking at markers of inflammation. We're looking at markers of nutrition status using iron isotopes and iron absorption,

as well as integrated muscle protein synthesis with deuterium methods and whole body protein turnover using 15 in alenine. So I love this model right now because we're trying to capture how an individual recovers. So 72 hours of stress, 48 hours of recovery. 72 hours of stress, 48 hours of recovery. What we're hoping to find is a better idea of if that first 48 hours is effective. Travis, you mentioned earlier kind of what does a soldier need to look like going into the stress environment? So one question is body composition. So in this study, the data is not, you know, data collection is not done, but we're trying to understand if somebody

has a little bit higher body fat percentage, is that protective? Because they're going into an energy deficit or does it matter and this is all what is the answer yeah what is the answer exactly we don't know we don't know yet so that study will hopefully finish up in the next year or so um other major fun studies the arctic study as i mentioned led by emily howard so that was an eight-day ski march in the um northern norwegian um area so up in the arctic study circle in Norway, and we were testing those food bar interventions. So we had an energy dense product. We had the essential amino acid enriched product, and the soldiers consume those on top of their normal rations, and then we also had a control product. In that study, energy deficits

were not as extreme, so they did consume all of the food in the bars generally as intended. So we didn't see a difference between energy deficit, sorry, energy dense bars and the amino acid enriched product, largely because energy deficiency likely wasn't as extreme. So that's always the goal. How can we feed people as best as possible? So that's a good take-home message that these are tools in the toolbox to reduce energy deficit. So I think those are my current favorite studies right now.

The sleep restriction study is certainly an interesting one. Holly McClung, one of my colleagues in the performance division, has been leading the efforts with the Ranger study, as well as a new effort with Special Forces Pipelines. So these are all projects we're trying to work on, you know, as time progresses and deliver some solutions to some of these populations. Wow. What about when it comes to fatigue?

Do you able to buy the protein bars? Can you buy the protein bar? When are you guys going to be done with the new, advanced, best protein bar on the market? You know, I think I would completely pivot careers if I could provide the best protein bar on the planet. Yeah, because you would be so rich. Yeah, I would. That's what you guys are designing. I want to know.

Yeah, again, I got to give hats off to the food technologists. They are the real, you know, professionals in that space. They make something that's easy to eat, tasty, shelf stable. So, yeah, as I mentioned, the Combat Feeding Division, they've really poured a lot of time and effort into that. So, yeah, hopefully we see that coming online in the next few years or so. Yeah. Do you, every time I hear, like, shelf stable, I immediately think unhealthy.

But you're talking about how you make that process. I know this is probably a little bit outside of, that's more like food technologist. But can you provide any insight into like how that's done? It's so interesting for me on how something that can be around for three years, but still be good for you. You were talking about the protein bars that like they're not shelf stable. I know what those tastes like too.

Sometimes you get one of those Quest bars. You bite into it. And it's like, whoa, that's the hardest protein bar in the world, like chip your tooth. But yeah, I would love to hear how you can have something shelf stable for that long, but still be healthy. Yeah, that's the technology is super interesting. So they have the retort processing, which again, I'm not a food technologist. This is just, you know, some of the understanding that the combat feeding division has taught me. So the retort pouches.

So if you've ever opened an MRE, it's usually like a gray or a brown pouch. and what that has gone through is high heat sterilization. And so those food ingredients within that pouch, let's just use chili and beans. So I used chili and bean in a previous study where we use it as a standard of care comparator to this essential amino acid product. So disclaimer, the MRE is designed to provide all micronutrients

and all macronutrients in amounts that are required for the individual for 21. in days. So keep this in mind. You know, it's not only about protein when we talk about that. So these, you know, rations are complex. They need to provide all of the iron the individual needs. They need to provide all the calcium, the protein, carbohydrates, etc. So they have the retort processing where it gets heated to extremely high heats and sterilized. And then that is tested in a hot box on location here. And then they are, then sampling that product after it goes into storage. And then once it passes all of their

regulatory requirements, it can be used in a ration. So the turnover of ration products, you know, they are optimizing the recipes. They are updating based on, you know, feedback from soldiers, but then also, you know, changes in, you know, population-based, like, affinity. So if any, So, for example, they have some fruit smoothie options now that weren't in the rations previously, and they've now tried to blend, you know, different vegetables and fruits into those puree pouches. So now we're trying to increase fruit and vegetable intake within that. So that's an example of how, you know, they're trying to balance the requirement of a shelf-stable item with still providing. We're not at the stage where, you know, you're going to get a fresh vegetable in your ration.

it's always going to have gone through some sort of intentional process. I also take a multi-bid of it and that could have been made like 10 years ago for all I know. So if you're digging the in the back of your cupboard, you'll find something

that hasn't been opened in five, 10 years. The only thing to help you about it is my mindset feeling good. What about with fatigue? Can I ask one more question? Do we have time? Yeah, when it comes to fatigue, you know, there's always the, is it glagogen, you know, is it, you know, I guess your fat storage, or is it the central governing theory?

They're rid of that where it's like a complete mental thing that causes people to actually, you know, like bonk out, but like, what are your thoughts in like providing the energy necessary to, you know, to avoid any type of like complete fatigue? Yeah, Travis, I love this question. I have had a great opportunity to have Lee Margolis, Dr. Lee Margolis as the carbohydrate expert in our division and learning more and understanding more about this glycogen piece as a way to optimize performance. So with the energy deficits, we see a reduction in glycogen storage, obviously. It makes sense. So no foods coming in.

We're going to start using those glycogen stores. Sure. And so a lot of his work has focused on understanding glycogen resynthes. you know, what is happening in this arduous environment. He has a really interesting series of studies where he's gone to altitude, seeing glycogen shifts and depletions, but then also seen like a concurrent change in insulin sensitivity. So when we're feeding carbohydrate,

you would think we can then rescue glycogen in that environment. But there seems to be an insulin resistance piece of stress that is making the use of this carbohydrate. from diets, where we call exogenous carbohydrate utilization, seems to be inhibited in some of these stress environments. So yeah, great, great question related to fatigue. We do know that providing exogenous carbohydrate does have a rescue effect. So work that we published together recently in energy deficit shows that the exogenous

carbohydrate that was provided during exercise still had a beneficial effect. still the ergogenic effect, and that was not hindered by the deficit of energy reduction. So we did a 20, 40, and 60% energy deficit. The good news is when you consume that carbohydrate during exercise, it seems that the protective effect is still there. So, yeah, great question. The glycogen piece is definitely part of the story, and which is why the rations still include carbohydrate beverage powders.

sure there's never a world where we're going to say that carbohydrate's not effective for preventing reductions in performance right yeah dr quay it's been great you're awesome thank you i i love the conversation yeah uh where can people learn more find you all the things yeah i think the best place um so we have our usarium websites the us army research Institute of Environmental Medicine. It's on Facebook. I'm personally on LinkedIn as well. And I can also provide my email address

if you want to include that as well. Monumental. Coach Travis Matt. Mashley.com. Or you can read much of my articles at jimware. Dot com. Douglas E. Larson. There you go.

The man already said it. I'm on Instagram. Douglas E. Larson. Dr. Gwynn. Appreciate you coming on the show. It's always nice to hear us with the latest research in the world of nutrition. It's looking like these days, so thank you for being here.

Thank you. I appreciate it. They need to send you out into the field now, so you get the... And they run all your studies out there. Oh, yeah. I'll go in bed for a few days. It'll be good. I like reading about this better than being here.

I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner, and we are Barbell Shrug to Barbell underscore Shrug. And make sure you get over to Rapid Health Report.com. That is where Dan Garner and Dr. Andy Galbun are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis, and you can access that over at rapid health report.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.