Habits and Hustle - Episode 539: Angelo Keely: Essential Amino Acids for Fat Loss Without Muscle Loss and Better Recovery

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Protein is everywhere. But the part of protein that actually does the work for muscle, recovery, metabolism, and staying lean is something most people rarely talk about: essential amino acids. We dive deeper into this in the Habits & Hustle podcast with Angelo Keely. We also chat about why amino acids outperform protein powder for muscle synthesis, why muscle loss quietly begins after 30, and how essential amino acids help preserve muscle during fat loss, fasting, and intense training. Angelo Keely is the co-founder and CEO of Kion, an active lifestyle supplement and functional food company. He has spent more than 20 years involved in nutrition, functional fitness, yoga, and meditation. → Visit getkion.com/habits for 20% off.  What’s Discussed (01:33) Angelo’s early life in the natural health world (16:01) Amino acids explained and why they power protein benefits (20:23) Muscle loss starting after 30 and what drives it (32:34) How protein timing affects muscle protein synthesis (36:03) Amino acids vs whey protein for muscle growth (47:10) The hidden muscle loss risk of GLP-1 weight loss (57:21) Amino acids vs creatine for muscle health (01:06:10) Why leucine becomes critical as we age Thank you to our sponsors: Fatty15: Head to Fatty15.com and use promo code HUSTLE to claim your discount.  Rho Nutrition: Try Rho Nutrition today and experience the difference of Liposomal Technology. Use code JEN20 for 20% OFF everything at RhoNutrition.com. Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit ProlonLife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use the code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Therasage: Visit Therasage.com and use code JEN to get 15% off your order. Your skin deserves this level of care. Air Doctor: Head to AirDoctorPro.com and use promo code HUSTLE to get UP TO $300 off today! AirDoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, plus a 3-year warranty — an $84 value, free! Magic Mind: Head over to MagicMind.com/Jen and use code Jen at checkout. Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to LiveMomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% off your first subscription.  Manna Vitality: Try it now by using the code Jennifer20 at MannaVitality.com.   Amp fit If you’re ready to make consistency a habit without sacrificing your sanity, check out JoinAmp.com.  Find more from Jen:  Website: https://jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Angelo Keely: Website: https://getkion.com Instagram: @kion → Visit getkion.com/habits for 20% off.

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Today we're talking about something almost everyone gets wrong when it comes to fat loss and staying tone. Thinking the answer is simply eating more protein. But what actually drives muscle repair are the essential amino acids inside that protein. And this matters more than most people realize. Muscle loss doesn't start in your 60s. For many of us, it begins after 30. And if you're dieting, training hard, or training, trying to stay lean as you age, that process can accelerate even faster. That's why I'm super excited to talk to Angelo-Keeley today. Angelo is the CEO of Keon and has spent more than two decades studying nutrition, performance, and the science of amino acids. In this episode, he explains why

not all protein works the same, why essential amino acids can outperform protein powder for muscle synthesis and how they can help you lose fat without losing muscle. We also talk about the hidden muscle loss risk during gLP1 weight loss, why leucine becomes more important as we age, and how amino acids can improve recovery. If you care about staying lean, strong and metabolically healthy, as you get older, this conversation is definitely worth paying attention to. So let's get into it. All right, you guys, welcome to habits and hustle. We have a friend of mine, a new friend. actually, who's on the podcast today. His name is Angelo Keeley. He is the founder of a company called Keon. And I really wanted him to be a guest for multiple reasons. One being that he is the expert of

experts on something that I think most of us don't know anything about, which is amino acids, very overlooked. And so he has graced me and us with his presence to tell us everything we need to know to really optimize our health. One thing that we never seem to ever focus on. So without further ado, thank you for being on Habits and Hustle. Thanks for having me, Jen. It's so great to see you. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to see you again. I know. We met really for the first time face-to-face, what was that, eudamonia, right? And we'd like deep dive into so many things. First of all, you are the most fascinating person that I've met in a very long time. Your story is very interesting, unique. Can you kind of just give us

an overview before we've been deep dive into aminos and all the things, who you are, what you're about, and, you know, what kind of led you to where you are sitting here. Well, those are big questions. I know. Who you are and what you're about. You know, I think honestly, a lot of who I am and what I'm about is maybe not as relevant to amino acids. Like, as we talked before, like, I really love my family. So, like, who am I? I'm a dad and a husband, and I just, like, really like being part of a family and raising kids and, yeah, just relationships. Well, you figured that out well. You figured.

Yeah. But if the question is more like, how did I end up here on the show, how do we know each other now and why do I know stuff about amino acids? I can tell that story. Well, I think there's a lot of like, there's like a lot of dovetails here, right? Because how you grew up with your, your parents and how you became like someone who became very specialized in this one area, I think is very interesting. So, yes, why don't you kind of just say,

Like, what kind of how did, what kind of was your story to kind of even start a supplement company in the first place? So it does go back really far. It goes back to childhood. My parents, I was born and raised outside Austin, Texas, to very hippie parents. Like, born at home, not vaccinated, didn't go to a doctor until I was seven. Like, old school, very hippie. My parents owned a natural health food store, a natural health food restaurant. and we actually moved to Austin because my dad was like an early partner in Whole Foods trying

to do a restaurant business. And so like they were very, they were like hippies, but they were also entrepreneurs. And I... That's interesting. Yeah. That's like kind of an oxymoron, right? Like that to me, they're so hippie, but yet also very, they had a business sense. Yeah, I think that's a good, yeah, I mean, so maybe, yeah, I mean, they're very hippie, but yeah, they were like, I mean, my dad's from the East Coast. and he's like a kind of old school East Coast, like alpha intense dude. Hustler, not in a hustle, I think in the best, I think in the terms that you use the word hustle. Yes. You know?

And so like make things happen. So of that spirit, but, you know, he was, went to Woodstock and got exposed to like herbs and, you know, and so, yes. I mean, imagine this guy with a super long beard, crazy long hair who's like the exclusive importer of Korean ginseng to Mexico. Like that's where my dad was. Exactly. Okay. It was very interesting. The way you described them to me and in your story, I found it to be fascinating.

If you don't remember, I was like hanging on every word and so was my friend with all the stuff. So, okay. So that's, so yes. So you grew up. Your parents had had like a health food store. The whole food thing I thought was very interesting. Then what? Yeah.

So the one other thing I'd name in that is that my parents were pescatarians. And I think that was maybe like a thing at that time. It was more popular. in that region. And yeah, so we ate a lot of vegetable-based, like, plant-based proteins, tofu, but we also ate fish some. And because of that, my parents talked a lot about protein. Like, as a little kid, I knew you need to eat beans and rice together. You should eat quino-lintels together if we're not going to have, like, fish tonight. So I was brought up in that, and my mom gave me amino acids as a kid. She was a very committed master swimmer.

And so my parents were into fitness, and they were into health, but they're also like hippies. And so, yeah, I was just like brought up in that. I, you know, naturally, though, as you grow up, you create your own path. At some point, like, you know, just take the program that your parents give you. And I think one maybe thing that makes that more intense in my environment was that my parents were very more entrepreneurial, kind of like very untraditional alternative. Man, it's not maybe the right word, but like, you've got to, like, figure out your own path. Like, there was not like a, oh, Angie, you should just do this and do that.

It's like even at the dinner table, it's you got to like fight for your ideas, etc. And so when I grew up, it was always me like creating my own path, learning my own lessons. And I learned very hard lessons. So when I was, you know, when I was around, you know, I got getting into high school, like now I'm eating whatever I want to eat, doing whatever I want to do, taking lots of drugs. And I have this very terrible experience when I'm 16 and a half where I take too much LSD. I'm in the wrong neighborhood. I provoke some people that are way more hardcore than me. And they stab me twice in the back.

they stabbed me in the knee. So I have, you know, huge scar down my abdomen. I had to get my patella tendon reattached. And then they beat me literally to almost like a pulp. So I wake up in the hospital days later from this. And that began like a really long journey for me in terms of healing my mind around it. Like obviously, like emotionally and psychologically, like I had PTSD from that. Totally.

Which, I mean, just a really bad trip will do that to you. But you go through that kind of or that type of physical trauma, but you combine them. It was, like, deep and physically. Like, I, you know, I couldn't walk for a long time and I had to recover. How long couldn't you walk for? It actually was fast than you think. I mean, that's amazing, like, just contemporary medicine and being a kid. It's like, I think I was within a few months.

Like, I was laid up for a while, but it'd be like if you tour, you know, your ACL, whatever, 20 years ago. Wow. Yeah, so, you know, but I go through that and. That's a crazy story. You just woke up one day, like, like, staph, like, woke up at, like, being stabbed, and you don't even know who did it, how it happened, nothing. I mean, I blacked out a lot of the experience. I mean, there's more, I mean, there'd be a whole other story to go down that whole route, but basically.

But you remember, I couldn't believe, like, that, like, when you told me that story initially, I was like, like, that's just, that's like, you did, you said it so by the way, like, it wasn't a big, like, that, that is, that actually would, I would think would kind of define the trajectory of your life. That's a major trauma in your life, right? That would change how you do everything. It was very transformative. And I think there's all different ways of talking about it.

You know, one, I think when I was at that age, two big things came up for me. One was this idea of like, almost like the absolute value scale in life. Like we're always trying to increase and get more and more and more positive. But actually, when you experience something that dark or suffering or like these really terrible things, it broadens your whole perspective. And suddenly, like, the palette of life experience is broader and bigger. And, like, I was able to value more things in life than I was. prior to that because before I just hadn't suffered like that ever. Right.

And then I think the other thing that comes up too is just when you, this is what I realized to that was that whether I make decisions or I don't make decisions or I define something I want or I don't define something I want, I am creating my life all the time. Whatever I have in mind, the actions I choose to do every day, the beliefs that I have, like that is going to manifest what my life becomes. and actually like these other kind of hippie friends of the parents of one of my friends gave me this book like Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawin, which is like an old school kind of creative visualization book. And I read that.

And it really, it influenced me to, I think, to understand and see that. Like, yeah, like I'm going to create my life. And I think a lot of people, that doesn't happen until you're 40 maybe. Like you realize you've just been following the recipe that your parents or society or whatever gave you. Totally. And so that was the blessing for me. while it was this like terrible painful experience, it made me really value life. It made me realize I can create my life.

And, you know, bad things don't actually have to be that bad. They can just be part of the recipe. It's so interesting. You say that it's like all about how your perspective is and how you choose to, like how you choose to utilize whatever that experience is. I'm reading a book right now. I think I was telling you, maybe I wasn't, the courage to be disliked right now. I was telling you.

And the book starts by talking about that. Like you're not a victim of your past. It's all about how you choose to or what you choose and how you choose to perceive that and then move forward with that. Right. And how you see something can be very different how someone else sees something. And then it's a ripple effect, right? I mean, I 100% believe in that. Yeah, me too.

And I think that whole experience and even now reflecting back on it in my life gave me humility. around, this is kind of paradoxical what I'm saying now. It's like, I create my life and the decisions I make are going to define what happens to me next, and I don't want to sit around like kind of blaming things in the past or all that. And what is it? Like, what was it in me that opened me up to this possibility of like having even this attitude or being positive about it? Right.

And it's like, I don't know. But I'll accept that as like luck or grace or there's also a bunch of stuff I'm not in charge of. You know, I think of all different types of people in life right now that have gone through something hard and some people figure it out and it turns in this positive thing and some people get stuck in it. Yeah. And it's like, I guess I don't sit around judging the people that haven't figured out as like, why don't you like suck it up? Right, right, right, right. Part of it's like, I'm grateful that I got like. That you don't just suck it up. That you actually suck it up and just get, go with it. And whatever that is, like whether it's some willpower or I'm blessed or whatever,

like I accept and I'm grateful for it. And it's, and it has worked out for me. And maybe also that that really bad thing that happened to you gave you the impetus and the power to kind of do all these things because you didn't want to waste your life. You didn't want to, you had much more of an expansive idea of like how to like live life to the fullest and experience things and go places because like your life is so interesting. And so that's a whole other podcast completely. But then how did like how did. How to end up in supplements? Yeah. Like how did you end up in supplements? Yeah. So I think so that that basically kick started this like personal health journey for me. It wasn't my parents that was mine.

And that was around, like, and not just playing sports, but, like, real fitness and trying to become really fit and become really healthy and heal myself with food and taking, you know, starting to take protein powder and thinking about amino acids again and all these types of things, not because, like, my parents told me to or because I want to be good at sports or something, but because I really want to, like, live. I want to have this, like, awesome body that's an awesome vessel. And I want to help my mind, some doing therapy, all this. And I think it just kick started this kind of personal development project that. that just kept going. And it didn't take me directly back into starting a supplement company, right? But it took me into, you know,

without recounting my whole story. Like, I lived overseas for many years and explored a lot of different types of careers. But during that whole time, it was always this search of, like, trying to find mental health, emotional health, physical health. I ended up back in Boulder, Colorado.

Well, so I was based in Austin, but I ended up back in Boulder, Colorado. I built and ran this behavioral health care company that was focused actually on really helping youth like me. Like that kid that we just talked about, that was 16, very much helping kids like that for many years. And then it kind of reached its end. And I think I, yeah, it's hard not to talk about it like fate almost or the same way I described before. Like, yeah, I have a willpower to like do, you know, to like lean in to hard things. Yes. And to have courage. And I think I only realized after starting Kion like, whoa, I started like a supplement company where amino acids, which is like my mom's favorite. supplement when I was a little kid would be the focus. And I didn't do it like, I want to make my mom

proud, but it's pretty weird, like that I, I just circled back to this space. I mean, consciously, I cared about protein, I cared about amino acids, I cared about fundamental nutrition. Like, what are, what are the nutritional supplements that we actually really truly need and can benefit from to live much better? Not just like some new hip product that someone wants to make, but like the stuff I want to take every single day. I want my family to take. Like, that's, that's where it's, that's where like, that's why I was committed to it. But on some level, I'm like, it is weird. It's almost like I built the company like my three-year-old mom would have been proud of. Yes. Like very subliminally. The fact that your mom even knew about amino acids back then,

it says a lot because this is what I found interesting when I like deep dived into all of this about amino acids and my own journey, which we'll get to in a second, or more than a second, is it's such a basic fundamental foundational thing, the amino. amino acids, yet so overlooked, you hear so much about protein, you hear so much about creatine, you hear so much about collagen. Nobody ever talks about amino acids, which, by the way, the benefits and like what you can get from it are, they actually supersede everything else. So let's start with this whole thing, right? Like, first tell us what are amino acids? Because I am sure most people listening are like, they've heard the word, like in the kind of like in the vortex

of life, but they still don't know what it is. And why is it important? So I'm going to answer why it's important first is like the headline. Make sure we all stay interested. Because we might go through some science here and you check me if we're getting like too boring or going through like, you'll see me falling asleep actually. How about that? You'll be snoring on the, on the sofa. No, I promise. I promise won't be that morning. So I'm going to say this. And we're going to come back to this. Essential amino acids are the active part of protein that basically create most or all of the benefits. Okay.

And they're this essential nutrient that if you don't get them, you're going to suffer with issues related to your skin, hair, nails, muscle, organ function, et cetera, on and on. So it's this key thing that's basically driving the health of all of these different types of organs and bodily functions. So now, what is it? Why is that? What is it?

Why is it? So I think this is a time actually kind of helpful to take a step back and link up to things that people maybe think they understand. Okay. But let's see if they, like, well, we'll see if you do, right? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's three, these three main macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fat. If you think about, I like to use the metaphor of your body basically being like a house,

right? So like to run this house that we're in, you need energy. You need energy to run these lights, to run the dishwasher, et cetera, to do everything in the house, the toaster, all these things. So that is really what carbohydrates are at their most fundamental level in the body. Like, it is an energy source that you bring into your body and you actually convert it into this thing ATP and like you beat your heart. You move. Like, that's what it is.

It's an energy source. And fat is similar to that. Fat is like maybe an alternative energy source. Think about like natural gas that you like run into your house to to run the stove or something like that. Right? It's another energy source. It also can be used and as part of like building cells. But those two, like their primary role is truly energy.

Okay. That is not why you eat protein. Less than 10% of the protein that you eat is used as energy. So why do people eat protein? So why do people eat protein? It is because we are made of proteins, and the proteins that we're made up of get old and break down and have to be replaced. So if we go back to the metaphor of like your body's like a house.

So this house that we're in, which by the way is a beautiful home. At some point, though, like the hardwood floors might start to wear out. Oh, I see what you're saying. The carpet needs to be replaced. You don't have any carpet. But, you know, like the sheet rock got a dint in it. You know, the kid ran into it or threw a ball at it, right? Like, over time, things break down and they start to fall apart. That's just what happens. And particularly, you might think, like, appliances, right? Like a toaster's going to break down before, you know, a really nice, you know, like stone countertop or something, right. And the same thing. You're right. So just over time, things just end up breaking down. Yeah. Or getting worn out. So here's a perfect example. The proteins associated with your, so, okay, so let's go down to like what your body is. like what is protein in your body?

Over half of the solid mass in your body. So you take out the water and the things that are like hard, solid mass, over half of that is made up of proteins. That's a large portion of your bones. That's all your muscles. That's your vital organs. That's your skin, your hair, your nails. But also things that are solid you might not think about, like hormones. Hormones are made up of proteins.

Your neurotransmitters in your brain, the chemicals through which you experience emotions, those are made up of, really the derivatives of protein. So all these things are all these things that are made up of proteins. And they degrade a different ratio, different time period. So your liver has a lot of proteins that it utilizes and it makes. 30% of them have to be remade every day. So we're talking like, that's like paper towels in your house, right? We're talking like super quick turnover. Yeah. Your muscle, it's somewhere between one to two percent of your muscle every day has to be broken down and remade with new proteins. That's a pretty big difference.

You get it? Yeah, it makes sense. But is that why people in middle age start, like, all you hear about now is I need to eat more protein, I need to eat more protein. Protein, it's become like the swan song. Like, everyone just keeps, and it's impossible to consume that much. People feel like it's impossible to consume that much protein. So does that mean that when you hit a certain age, that's when things really start to break down?

Like, you know, it's like at the 40 mark or the 35 mark. Like, when is that mark when really protein starts to break down and we have to really supplement? It starts at 30. Okay. And it progressively gets worse every decade after that. At 30 even. Yeah, it starts at 30, but you won't start. I mean, it's like lots of things in aging.

It starts at 30 if you don't really notice it. But at 40, 50, 60, it gets worse and worse and worse. And I'll foreshadow this, but we should come back to it because like the aging impact is, really its own, really interesting part about why you would think very differently about protein. Protein needs are not the same at all stages of life. I know. They're very different, yeah. And I also want to know how people would know. You said they won't know at 30, so what would be symptoms at 40 or 50 that you know that you're protein deficient besides less muscle mass? It's harder to maintain muscle, your skin quality, your hair quality, anything that's made up of

these proteins. Also depression maybe even, like your mood? mood could be an issue. But I think in lots of cases, people are experiencing with, like, with kind of pure vanity metrics. And what you can just think of, like, the proteins associated with your skin, your hair, your nails, your muscle, those are like luxury proteins. Yeah. Your body is going to make sure you have heart tissue and necessary liver proteins before it makes sure that your skin looks good. Right. And so that's why your body starts, as your body's ability to digest protein, and more importantly, it's, it's, it's, prioritization. and sensitivity to amino acids, which again, we're kind of diving deeper. I think we'll kind of

keep hitting this so people get it. It decreases over time, so the body's less responsive to the protein that you eat. And that's why you need a much higher concentration of particularly lusine enriched essential amino acids. Certain amount of essential amino acids, you want a lot more leucine in them to overcome that. Any type of stress, aging is one type of stress, but so is weight loss if you are like restricting calories, your body, again, it's not prioritizing keeping your skin, your hair, your nails, your muscle, all that looking good. It's going to use the protein in a really different way. Or if you're injured or recovering from an illness or you're training really hard for exercise, any of these things where there's a lot of stress, your body needs

a different amount of those essential amino acids and it needs them in a much higher concentration to get the benefits. So, but going back to this like this protein analogy, right, where it's like your body's made up of these proteins and they're breaking down. So here's what happens and now it ties back in this amino acid thing we were just talking about. So right now, like literally, if I look at my skin, it's made up of millions of proteins. You can't see them, right? They're microscopic. But some of them right now are breaking down.

And the reason why they're breaking down is because they're just old. Like they're not as functional as they used to be. And when that one little protein breaks apart, now I'm going to give you another metaphor with the house. Think about bricks. Like lots of houses are made of. bricks. So think about these, these proteins are like bricks. And so in my skin, I just see like a wall of skin. But that wall of skin is made up of a bunch of little bricks of protein, all right? Yeah.

Inside of those bricks, just like a brick in your house, like a brick in your house is not made up of one brick. It's made up of like thousands of little grains of sand. Right. So these, this little protein is made up of lots of little amino acids. It's like the little grains of sand that make up the brick. And those amino acids, some of them are still good and some of them are no longer good. So when this little protein in my arm breaks apart, I literally pee out some of the amino acids, the ones that aren't good anymore. Okay. Yeah. They get converting to urea, you lose them. And some of the amino acids that are in that little brick can actually get reused to make a new piece of skin tissue, a new little protein.

And now the question is, okay, well, if I just peed out some of the grains, like I lost half my brick, you know, I lost half the brick that made up the skin. How do I rebuild it? That's why you eat protein. When you eat protein, chicken, beef, quinoa, whatever it is, you digest the food, you digest the proteins, the amino acids in it get released into your blood, and they go throughout your entire body, and they help to rebuild your skin, rebuild your muscle, rebuild liver proteins, make new hormones, turn into your neurotransmitters. And the thing is, there are different qualities of protein based on how dense they are in these essential amino acids. And Okay.

How bioavailable they are, the proportion of them, and so it really, really matters. The quality of the essential amino acids you're getting in your diet will directly impact all of these things. Okay, so what are the best quality amino acids, proteins that we should be focusing on? So what I'll do is I'll give you like a spectrum of like what the impact is. Okay. So on the, I would say on the, first of all, I want to say, if you're not under stress and you are young, Like, let's say you're 20 years old.

Okay. And you're not training that hard and you're not overweight. You generally eat pretty well. Everything I'm about to say is less important. I'm being real. Like the amount of protein you need to eat, the quality of the protein is less important. All of these things become more important if we're overweight and we're trying to lose fat. Or we're particularly over 40.

Or we're really trying to train hard and like put on muscle. You know, it's like it's under stress where everything about to say matters a lot more. Right. And aging. And aging. I would say over 40, and honestly, aging is the greatest stress-induced physiology. Like, if you're talking about a state of being that this matters the most for, it is aging. And thus, it's all of us over 40. Yeah, 100%.

And it only gets more intense as you get older. So on the very, very far end. By the way, when you're 20, you can do anything. Yeah. I mean, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. And I think that's the, there's always these arguments about plant protein versus animal protein or this protein powder, amino acids and people like go and use studies and talk about things and like yeah it all gets blended together and it's like it for some groups this is less important for others it's more important yeah I think this is extremely important for people who are over 40 for sure extremely important this is why I'm you're here extremely important for people over 40 and I would just say like

I mean like and who are active yeah I mean quick side note like my son is a very competitive basketball player he's you know almost 13 but he trains a lot for him it actually does matter he's under a lot of stress. Yeah. So, like, for him, I do think about protein nutrition and amino acids because he's not, he's exercising like three hours a day. Exactly. I was going to say also for people who are active, who are very active, who are trying to, like,

operate in terms of, in their brain at a high level. You would be, like, really optimized. Yeah, you want to be optimized. You can't eat, like, a little, as you get older, it's impossible. That's why this is so important because I don't think anyone knows. You don't know what you don't know, right? Yeah. So go on.

Okay. So on the very far. end of the spectrum in terms of protein quality, you have plant proteins. Right. And that's not to like offend anyone who get into argument, but it's like, it simply is the case that plant proteins outside of a very few, like tofu and like soy, soy proteins are very high quality. They're the closest to like animal proteins. And they get a lot of bad rep because of phytoestrogens, but like, it's honestly pretty bunk. You look at like even male bodybuilders who consume a lot of like soy and like they have higher testosterone levels than the ones who don't. Like, really? Yeah, the

So soy things like, that's a whole other argument too, but like if I was, if you're plant-based, I would encourage you to eat soy. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, you got to look out for other things like GMO and chemicals and pesticides. I just find you're eating a lot of extra calories when you're eating plant protein. Yeah, so here's going to say, on the very far end, you have plant proteins. And this is basically any kind of protein that comes from a plant.

And the reason why it's the lowest quality protein is because our body's ability to digest that protein and break it down, right, via like proteolytic enzymes. And this is not about like, oh, you know, how much do I chew or what do I need to eat? Like it's literally like we have certain chemicals in our body that help us break down proteins. Totally. And they're less compatible with the plant-based proteins. And so when we try to get the amino acids out of them, we can't get as many. On top of that, they're covered in carbohydrates typically.

Exactly. So they're very caloric. So you have to eat a lot of it. You have to eat five, ten times the amount of it as you would if you ate our super-dense animal protein to get the same amount of protein. Yes. Like I was telling you yesterday when we were talking. when we were together, you know, you said this. Yeah. If you eat kidney beans, for example, for protein, you'd have to have like 750

calories versus like a 250 calorie piece of steak to get the same quality or caliber of protein. Yes. Or like amount of protein. Yeah. Well, impact. I would just say like the impact of the protein because rather than just talking about grams of protein, it's like how much of it can actually digest and also like...

And bloating and okay, that's a whole other thing. So anyway, so that's kind of on the very, very far end, right? Then, and there's a few, spirulina actually is a remarkably good plant protein, but how much spirulina are you going to eat? I was going to say spirulina is a really good. But also, it's not, like, a lot of these plant proteins are not satiating. No. That's the other issue. Yeah. So you're going to have to eat.

Or you're going to have to eat, again, a lot of calories of like carbs, etc. You know, so that's kind of on the far end. Then you start getting into just, honestly, whole food animal proteins are all. What about dairy? Like, yogurt. Dairy's excellent. So I was going to say if you choose to be vegetarian, like, I mean, yogurt is incredible. Dairy is like one of the highest quality proteins.

So are eggs. Mm-hmm. Exactly. The most bioavailable protein there is. Awesome protein. Yeah. But also beef, chicken, pork, fish. Like, these are all great, excellent protein sources.

Yep. But here's what, like, I think, becomes more interesting and people don't realize. And this is where we're really get into, like, essential amino acids. So in a protein, all of these proteins I just talked about, they're made up of these 20 amino acids. Imagine, like 20 little different types of grains of sand that can make up the brick. Nine of them are essential, which by definition means you have to eat them. Like if something's essential in nutrition, it just means your body can't make it.

Right. Non-essential, literally your body can take those essential nutrients. It can take lucene, isolucine, and turn it into another amino acid, like glycine. Like it actually has the ability to synthesize new amino acids your body does. But you have to eat the essential ones. On top of that, the essential amino acids are the active component. And I will describe what that means now. When I eat some beef, and I'm going to give you a specific amount because there's really interesting

studies on this, I eat 30 grams of beef protein, and I digest that. There's a certain amount of essential amino acids in that. And this is a lot, kind of shocking, though, but it's like only about, you know, a quarter of beef is actually protein because it's full of water, like when you weigh it. Of course. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It's full of water. There's other micronutrients in it. There's fats, there's other things, about a quarter of it. And then of that, less than half of that is essential amino acids. So you get this big piece of meat, and actually 12% is the essential amino acids. It's a quite small amount. And what your body is doing is when it digest that meat, there's 30 grams of beef protein, it really is just reading for the essential amino acids.

And that peak of those essential amino acids, when they hit the blood, that is what tells your body, hey, gin, it's actually okay for you to break down these old skin tissues, these old liver proteins, and rebuild and make new ones. And the more amount of essential amino acids that hit the blood at once is what corresponds to your body saying, let's, it's called turnover, like, whole body protein turnover and muscle protein turnover. Like, let's break down the old proteins and make new ones. So here's what's shocking. 30 grams of beef protein generates more whole body protein synthesis, this whole protein turnover in your body, then if you ate twice the amount of that, 70 grams of beef protein, but you ate that beef protein as part of a mixed meal.

When you eat the beef with broccoli, with potatoes, which I just want to be really clear, I'm not in any way endorsing some kind of orthorxic, like, you know, we had dinner, like I eat a nice whole mixed meal. And that's part of like, I think being a healthy person is like eating whole meals and getting lots of micronutrients. but when you talk about protein synthesis, and why this would start to matter as we get older and how to optimize our diet.

So you're saying eating protein by itself is way more effective than mixing protein with other foods. For the purpose of stimulating this protein synthesis, of telling the body to make new proteins. That is so interesting. So let's say, for example, I have a piece of salmon with green beans.

Would it be less effective than me just eating a piece of salmon on its own? for the purpose of protein turnover, yes. But that's not how I would suggest that you try to construct your diet. I wouldn't be like, all right, now I'm going to start eating my salmon on its own, and then I'm going to wait an hour, and then I'm going to eat my fiber. There's a whole thing about that, too. People eat food separately because of all the other theories and benefits, they say.

And this is not a theory. This is very well-documented protein and amino acid nutrition science by the leaders of the whole field. of academia over the last 20 years. It's like multiple studies, multiple people. Again, and for anyone who's really interested in this stuff, go check out the International Society of Sports Nutrition. They have a great paper on, specifically on essential amino acids that is an overview of this, but they'll link out to tons of other pieces.

So that alone should kind of blow your mind, but here's a crazier thing. Way protein powder stimulates three times. It's actually, here's where I really want to break it down. What is important is the amount of the essential amino acids that are in your blood. Okay. Okay. And when you consume way protein powder,

yeah. Because it's even more bioavailable, it has less of the other, you know, even fibrous material attached to it and minerals and like, it's a more concentrated form of the protein, right? It increases those EAA levels three times as much as beef protein does, like a whole steak. You take 20 grams of steak or 20 grams of beef protein from steak

or 20 grams of way protein. You'll get three times the impact from the way protein. From weight protein. Why? And again, it's not, it is simply because it is more bioavailable and these amino acids hit the blood more quickly. So a kind of quick hack, and we're going to get to essential amino acids in a second now. But me, rather than saying like, yeah, you need to always separate all your meals,

I'd be like, no, like have an awesome dinner with your family where you eat fiber, which is also good for you. And all the micronutrients and like all these other things and have a piece of salmon and have some rice or whatever else you like for like a healthy carb. And when you think about how am I going to snack in the middle of the day, maybe it's not just like one more meal or even, you know, like beef jerky or something. It's like the protein shake might actually be a much better bang for your buck. It's going to have less calories and it's going to have a way greater impact on this protein synthesis, like why you're even trying to consume the protein. Like there are ways to kind of, and that's how I think supplements can really be used, rather than replacing your core meal.

and real nutrition. That's when like supplementing. That's when supplement starts to make sense. But here's now the mind-blowing impact of what you, when you think about essential amino acids. So now there's this other category of product called essential amino acids. And even when you get way protein powder, which I love, like my company makes way, we make, in my opinion, like the best way protein. But like, way protein is awesome. But even when you get way protein, grass-fed, way-protein isolate, highest-quality, most premium, cleanest thing,

Of that protein, less than 45% is essential amino acids. Most of it is the non-essential, which are not bad. They're good. They have good things that they do, but they don't increase the protein synthesis at all, zero. And they're very clear studies that show this. Increasing the amount of non-essential, no increase. So when you take an essential amino acid supplement, and it's all the essential, it's only the essential amino acids, you're only getting the active component.

When you give that to young adults, and we'll get into like aging adults, the impact versus way protein is 3x. So like you want to take five grams of essential amino acids, it's going to have three times the impact as five grams of weight protein. Or more equivalently, it's more like five grams of essential amino acids is going to be the same as like, you know, 15 grams of weight protein for a young adult. And the reason for that is somewhat obvious. One is it's entirely, it's only the essential amino acids. Whereas half of the weight protein is these other things. But on top of that, it's immediately digested.

It goes into the bloodstream immediately. So even better than, say, just trying to have a way protein shake in the middle of the day, just take some essential amino acids. And you're getting a way bigger impact than a way protein shake. But even a huger, what's huge is not a real word. I like that word. A hugeer, a much larger impact than trying to eat, you know, a can of tuna or chicken breast or one more meal. Like, it's a way.

more efficient and effective way to get that boost. And I think as we see as we talk about getting older, like you need every edge you can get. Yes, exactly. That's what I've noticed. I want to take a quick break to talk about something I genuinely think is a game changer for healthy aging. And that's fatty 15. Here's what you need to know. Scientists discovered the first new essential fatty acid in over 90 years. It's called C15 and it's a big deal. When your cells don't have enough C15, They become fragile and they age faster. And when your cells age, your body ages. Full stop.

As many as one in three people worldwide may have low C-15 levels, a condition called cellular fragility syndrome. And most of them have no idea. Faddy 15 co-founder, Dr. Stephanie Van Watson, discovered C-15 while working with the U.S. Navy studying aging dolphins. Based on over 100 studies, we now know C-15 is a key nutrient for slowing biological aging at the cellular level. And fatty 15 has three times more cellular benefits than omega-3 or fish oil. By the way, 72% of fatty 15 customers report seeing or feeling benefits within 16 weeks,

things like deeper sleep, improved energy, and healthier hair, skin, skin, and nails. It's vegan-friendly, free of allergens and preservatives, and clinically proven to raise C-15 levels. So if you care about your age, and I know you do, this is worth your attention. Go to www.fatty15.com slash habits and use code habits at checkout to get an additional 15% off their 90-day starter kit. That's fatty 15.com. that's fatty 15.com slash habits, code habits. And you can find the link in the show notes. Now let's get back to the episode.

So you're telling me, just one break, I want to kind of just like summarize that. Or maybe, so having a scoop or two of weight protein is actually more effective than actually for your protein synthesis than having a steak. Yes. Okay. And then how about is way protein more effective than having salmon?

Yes. Okay. So overall, like the overarching thing that you said is way protein is the best form of protein that you can get overall. Okay. So I want to be clear. I'm talking less about the idea of like way protein because I'll just say, oh, no, but you're talking about. When you have yogurt and there's that clear liquid on the top. That's way protein.

So make sure you don't throw it away. Stir that in. Really? Yeah. I always like throw it away. Really? Yeah. I mean, there's other liquids in it too, but I would definitely keep that.

Oh, that's good to know. So like way... Give me more tips like that. Yeah, so way protein is a protein source that naturally is a part of dairy. Okay. I understand. So what I'm saying is isolated protein powder. Yeah.

Particularly way protein powder. It's the one that has the most amount of studies behind it and studies that compare it in this way that we're talking about. Taking a way protein powder as a supplement on its own is definitely going to outperform any type of whole food animal protein, a three, you know, piece of salmon, a piece of chicken, a piece of beef, et cetera, by many times. Does that mean that we would build muscle easier or better with that weight protein than we would with a salmon steak or whatever, whatever?

In the context of supplementation, I would say yes. I think the only reason why I want to like kind of, you know, hedge that is I'm not encouraging people to stop eating real food. No, of course. Because there are other good things in the salmon. There are fats in the salmon and eating a mixed meal and having carbs are really good for you and like recovering from training, etc. But when we're talking about.

Okay, we're going to be very, very clear. This is just for one very specific point. But for building lean muscle. For building lean muscle, if you're trying to hit much higher daily protein targets, like to do that, a way protein. To do that, a way protein powder is going to be way more effective than just trying to eat more whole food protein. Okay, so here's the thing. Now, what if we just take our aminos and not do the other things?

Like, let's say we... If you replaced it, if instead of way protein, you only did the amino acids. Yes. Better. So, the... Better than the way protein. The better solution for supplementing, you know, already like a high protein diet and trying to live the super vibrant life and have really good muscle and be lean and have good hair and skin and all that. Amino acids are the supplement that are going to

outperform weight protein. And basically outperform and also get and will allow you to get your the amount of protein you actually need for all the other kind of benefits your body needs. Yeah, because when your body's eating protein, it's trying to get these essential amino acids. That's what it wants. And you're giving it that in this more highly concentrated form. So you're saying there's 20 amino acids. Your like your supplement gives you nine essential. what happens to the other other ones? What happens to them when?

Like, for example, I've been mixing your aminoes with water, the mango one I like a side issue, and it has nine amino acids, right? Essential nine. So the other 11, we don't, so that's not obviously in the thing. Our bodies are producing it itself. It's not as essential because what happens to them? Like, why does the supplement not have 20?

Why does it only have nine? Okay. So in... Like L-glutamines, a perfect example. Yeah, so here, which is a good amino acid and has other specific functions that it does. So it's not like you don't need these things. But here...

Where do we get them? Maybe here's a... Well, you'll get it... Here's why you should eat meat every day. Okay. You do need some of that every day. Okay. So if I was just giving you basic guidance,

what I would say is like, don't go below 0.6 grams of protein per pound of body weight of real food every day. Okay. That's what I would. I would just, I would like make that a fundamental base. I think that's, that's pretty clear. And that is because there's a certain amount of protein you need to just function.

Like for your immune health, for, well, here's the deal. If you eat less protein than that as a young, healthy adult, so I'm saying 20 year old again, not performing, et cetera, you literally, all of your luxury proteins, your muscle, your skin, your hair, all these, they're going to start to, they're going to start to degrade. And why is that? It's because of this. Like, literally, if I go. a few hours is technically all it takes. But let's just say I go a day without consuming any protein. And now I literally have these liver, these parts of my liver that need new liver proteins to be replaced. They're breaking down. They have to be rebuilt. And it's pulling everything, all the

amino acids out of my blood that it can to help rebuild them. And it can't find them, right? Where does it get them from? I'm not eating new protein. What does it do? Right. It literally breaks down my muscle tissue. Your muscle tissue is your resum. of amino acids for the rest of your body. And that is why, like, when people diet, oftentimes they start to lose lots of muscle. It's why when we get older, we start to lose lots of muscle. It's because our ability to utilize proteins in our diet,

to get these amino acids to, like, rebuild our heart tissue, to support our liver. So the main idea is, like, there's a certain amount of amino acids you just need to, like, even just have basic functioning. Yeah. And there's a certain amount of non-essential amino acids that you wouldn't want to, like, force your body to have to synthesize them all.

And by eating them in food, you get them. But what I would say is, like, the cow, right? The cows meat, like, its proteins, are made in an ideal way for that cow to just be a cow, for it to, like, function and live. Yes, of course. Like the structure of its tissue. It wasn't made, it's not, like, made so that it's perfect,

it's the perfect protein for us. So when we eat a cow and we eat some of that beef, what happens is some of the amino acids we, like, really want and really use all of the essential amino acids. And we can use some of the non-essential, but a lot of the non-essential we don't even actually need. And so they get converted into sugars. They get converted into urea, et cetera. They get converted into other things and we don't actually use them all. So it doesn't, we use them for energy, but we don't use them actually in a substantive way to actually help rebuild our proteins. And so maybe the simplest way of describing it is

it's good to eat whole food protein because it's got micronutrients, minerals, et cetera. and it has some of these non-essential, but we need a lot less of them than we need of the essential. So when I, can, can I got a bunch of questions just about this, because number one, I went to get my blood work done, and I was told to take L-glutamine, which is an amino acid, right? Do I need to take, if I just took your amino acid, which are the nine essentials, can I set, can I not take the L-glutamine or does that, does that have a separate function and benefit? That has a separate function, and what that is likely pointing to, like, I don't know your

specific health situation. But there's a unique, you have a unique health condition that is necessitating you to consume more l-glutamine. That is not like a, it's not just like every woman your age is in that situation. So that you're talking about a very unique situation. So, and those cases do exist for people, like where they need more l-glutamine, they need more iron. This person needs to consume more vitamin D. This person needs to- I'm just depleted in everything, which I find, you know, which is true, which is, by the way, what I was saying before we started is that I think it's so crucial for people to not just, this is what I learned.

And when I got, I just got my blood work done. And I think what people get stuck in this loop is when they get their blood work and they start taking all the supplements, they end up just taking the same supplements for like years on end without, you know, really kind of checking if they even need those, if they're deficient in it, what their body actually needs now. Because what I need now at my age was very different than what I need three years ago or even 10 years ago, right? So now these amino acids like are essential for my overall like well-being. And what I was going to say to you. And so now I've like that's become, that's become part of my

daily morning routine. I never took amino acids before. I didn't know about them. But what I was going to, like, I didn't know about the importance of like how you need to incorporate them. But what I was going to say is like if you, if you're someone who's even on a GLP1 or even a runner where it breaks down your lean muscle mass. If you just incorporated this amino acid supplement, would it enhance and benefit you like exponentially? Expendentially. So let's just talk the GLP1 user. And I'm going to make it even broader. Okay. If you were cutting calories and it can be drug induced or it can be my fitness pal and mean diet coach. Whatever is getting you to eat less food. If you're eating less food, you are going to lose weight.

So there are these kind of basic rules of thermodynamics dynamics and the way that the body works that it's like, I burn a certain amount of calories per day. And if I consume less than I burn, then what happens is two things happen. One is my fat stores, I start to use them. It's actually like people are always frustrated with our body fat, like in contemporary society because we have too much of it. But it's actually a very cool mechanism that it's like if you have a bunch of food at one time, you can eat it and you'll actually store the excess food on your body so that then

when you're hungry later on, you can live off of it. It's like imagine living in the woods and it's like, you kill this animal and you eat it all and you can like actually store it other rather than just trying to like, you know, keep it in a cooler. Most people don't want to be storing it, but I understand what I'm saying. That's where it came from. And so that's what happens. Like now you suddenly eat less. And what happens is you burn off that fat, that excess store. Okay. But what also happens is that you burn muscle. You burn a lot of muscle when you lose weight. And so a lot of people- What's the percentage do you know, like 30%? Yeah. So it depends. Here's what I'd say though. And this math is not perfect math, but I'll give you a few. few pretty clear, you know, validated figures. In general, there's this idea that about a 3,500 calorie deficit. If I eat 3,500 calories less than I need, I'll burn about a pound of fat. Right. And it's about 750 calories for a pound of muscle. So considerably less of a caloric deficit will burn, will eat away at your muscle. Now, it's not a perfect mix of these, but it's like,

well, then how does your body choose which it's burning and why? And, you know, like what happens? But typically what happens if you do a very aggressive calorie restriction, and that could be, you know, like I'm trying to lose, and I'm saying aggressive, like two pounds a week, which I think lots of people think is not crazy, but that's actually on the upper limit of like what's sustainable over time. Right. And if you're on a GLP1 or something and you're losing four or five pounds a week, the likelihood is that out of the first 10 pounds that you lose, about four pounds will be muscle and six pounds will be fat. So 40%. Over a long term, over the course of like nine months, it ends up being about 25 to 30% is muscle loss. So that's a lot of muscle. And what I would

tell you is, no one is like, I promise you, you're not wanting to lose muscle. No one's wanting to lose muscle. It's hard to build back. Muscle is very metabolically intensive. When you have more muscle, you burn more calories. At rest, when you're working out, it helps you stay strong. It helps you look lean in tone, et cetera. So it's like you don't want to lose muscle. And the difference between losing 10 pounds of fat only or losing six pounds of fat and four pounds of muscle is very different. It's different for your metabolism. You're going to look totally different. So the ideal situation would be whether you're dieting or you're taking a gLP one, how can you lose 10 pounds of fat and lose no muscle? How can you lose 20 pounds of fat and lose no muscle? Or maybe 19 pounds of fat and one

pound of muscle. And there is a way to do it. And so a series of really awesome recent studies actually sponsored by the Department of Defense, and it was through the University of Arkansas medical branch that did all this research. Basically, and they were trying to study it with people in the military who are undergoing like calorie deprivation, carrying large packs, et cetera. What happens when we cut calories?

And how much more of essential amino acids do we need to give these people to ensure that they stay in a net protein balance, meaning they don't lose muscle? They don't start breaking down their muscle to serve their liver and to serve their heart. And what they found was that a 30% caloric deficit. So let's just say for simple terms, a 2,000 calorie a day diet is like your, this is what you eat every day.

You'll stay the same weight. If you cut 600 calories, which is about 30%, which over the course of a week is a little over a pound of, you know, weight loss. So it's not something super aggressive. You need a 300% increase. Oh, wow. A three-fold increase in essential amino acids. in each serving to not have muscle loss. That's a lot more.

That's like a ton more. That's a lot more. I think the GLP one is super important because people are looking, they're looking not necessarily better. They're smaller versions of what they were potentially, but a lot of the people I see have lost a lot of their muscle mass. And once they get off of that drug,

everybody I know who's gotten off of it has gained their weight back, very fast within like a month, like 40 pounds in a month. And it's because they lost all of their muscle, which we just talked about, is how they burn, how you end up having a higher metabolism to burn calories. And it's going to be that much harder to ever lose the weight again. Exactly. It's the same problem that always existed with yo-yo dieting. It's like you starve yourself and then you go back to the behaviors and you start, like, you have to find a sustainable way long-term in order to, and I'm not against GLP wines. I'm saying if that's your long-term sustainable way. No, but what I'm saying is this is a hack for it. But you have, but you have to find. But you

have to be thinking about muscle during it. And it is what I would say is, if you are doing some type of, you know, restrictive dieting or a GLP-1 medication, I would be looking at taking essential amino acids. And we should get more into this, lucene-en-enriched essential amino acids. It matters. It's not just like any amino acids that you can find out there on Amazon or something or whatever brand or even if a famous person is promoting it. The science is very specific.

A leucine-en-en-riched essential amino acid supplement. Right. I'd be taking two servings of that or three servings of that a couple times per day. Really? So it's quite a bit. But again, that's if you're doing this kind of aggressive, like you're taking a drug. Right. You're definitely not eating enough protein.

Yeah. Or you're doing this like very aggressive calorie counting. Like really, you have such a good chance of having like little to zero muscle loss if you do that while also doing this type of aggressive dining. This is a massive hack if you're talking. taking a GLP one, in my opinion. And the only way I thought your frame is, like, rather than it almost being like a hack or a shortcut, it's actually like a really thoughtful way to actually be healthy. Like if you really, you're not just chasing the short term high of like, I lost a bunch of

weight. Like, who do you really want to be? No, I think it's- You really want to be this like vital, strong, fit, beautiful, handsome person. You know, whatever you're thinking is, live a long time. It's like, you can't, you got to think about your muscle. Well, I also, I think that's true. The reason why I'm calling it a hack is, number one, people understand the fact that, like, well, I would hope that most of these people are lost their appetite, so it's really hard to get that much protein intake, right? So they're struggling on that. I think also you need to do strength training and all these things. But if they are at least taking us, this is an easy, an easy way to kind of, an easy integration into their daily routine, that can really help save their muscle. Why wouldn't everybody do? it. That's the first part. Totally. Okay? Like, it's a no-bra. Like, to me, I'm all about no-brainers.

Like, make my life as easy and simple as possible to get the maximum, like, you know, um, effects. To me, that's what it would be. Another one is, like, I was saying running or like high, like, running, because I'm a big, I love, like, to me, there's no better, like, cardio than running to clear my mind, to enhance my mood. I feel the same way. I love running. And yet, I know as I'm an old woman now. My joints are falling apart, you know, like it breaks down a lot of lean muscle mass, all the things, but I can't stop it because of the mental health benefits, right? So I want to, but I'm like, oh, shit, what am I going to do? Because I love it, but yet, like, I don't want my muscle to break down. So if I started to, if I take these amino acids, that would also help me preserve my muscle.

Incredibly. And that's one of the, I think, a really cool tool for something like Keonamino's is that you take it before you run and you don't, it's not, it's like, you're not, it's like, you ate a bunch of food. It's not like you're heavy. Because I would say you also could try to eat some like chicken, 45 minutes before you run. It's like, that's pretty hard. Some turkey slices. But you can take a serving or a couple servings before you go run and you're not only helping preserve, this is actually really important, you're not only helping preserve that lean muscle during that period, but you're also actually helping replace the older proteins that are in your muscle. You're literally going to enhance your

muscle tissue by doing that. See, that to me again, is a major improvement. hack, I would call it a hack or like strategy. I need to challenge you by challenging hack. I was just like, I don't like that word. I hate that word. But to me, I would say strategy. It's a really,

strategy tool, like obvious thing to do. Like to me, foundational, like, this makes too much sense. Well, because like I'm so concerned with being older, like over 40, loving to run. It's not as easy when I was 20, right? Like, I didn't have to care. Even 30.

Now I'm like, oh shit. Like, I am not. I'm not building muscle as fast, right? Or is I'm very concerned with like breaking down what I do have to preserve, right? So I'm looking for any easy tool or strategy to maintain everything I have as long as I have it, right? So my question to you then is how does amino's, how are they different than creatine? Because the creatine, everyone talks about creatine. Oh my God, creatine, creatine, protein, creatine, it's all you hear.

Right? Like maybe my algorithm is different than yours, but every second real, every second post is have, you know, the creatine and now I'm taking this and I'm adding protein. Like, what is the difference between creatine and aminos? If I take aminos, do I need creatine? Like, can you talk about that stuff? So a couple quick sound bites. Creatine's awesome.

I think it's worth taking. If I could convert you to take it to, I would. Okay. I would say that the essential amino acids are more important. Okay. And here's why. And it actually ties into something that you said. But I'm also going to get to what creatine is and how it works and why it's cool.

Okay. Okay, so you were saying like, hey, strength training is also important. I 100% agree. Like, actually doing strength training is something that you cannot get from nutrition alone. Like, we're having all this whole conversation about, should I take the weight protein or the amino acids with food? It's like, it really does matter. And choosing those essential amino acids as a supplement is going to outperform everything else. But they ultimately will not replace training your muscles.

Like actually putting your muscles under duress and picking up everything's and moving. I'm like, you're just, there's a lot of other really important. important things that happen in doing that. Okay. But what is incredible about essential amino acids is that they work even when you're not, they help exercise, like I said, you take them before you run, you take them before you exercise, and they are going to have an amazingly synergistic effect with the exercise. The blood flow from the exercise pushes them into the muscles, and you get way more benefit from the exercise than if you had not taken them. But you take them on their own, and they have amazing benefit. That is not really true about creatine. And an amazing study that

exemplifies this is quite old. It's actually from, there were a series of studies that NASA sponsored, but the really big one is in 2005. And basically, they were trying to figure out how to help astronauts not lose muscle mass in space because there isn't resistance training, right? It's very difficult. There's no weight. There's no gravity, right? And so, you know, they sponsored a lot of different studies. But one was essential amino acids. So they actually, this is with young adults where they put them at bed rest for 28 days. So imagine, imagine agreeing to that study. I'm going to like be in a bed, and go to the bath and this bed and like be it all day long, 28 days. Wow.

They got to eat normal meals, three meals a day. But on top of that, they had to take essential amino acids, 10 grams, twice a day. And then they were trying to see, like, what would happen? After 28 days of bed rest, there was no net muscle loss. Complete lack of movement. These people did nothing. They're in bed for 28 days. No training of the muscles, nothing.

And yet they lost no muscle mass. they did lose some muscle function. When they went back to train, they couldn't lift quite as much weight, but they literally lost no muscle mass. And so why and how is that? That is the kind of quintessential explanation of how when you consume a high dose of these essential amino acids and they hit the blood, they literally help rebuild and maintain your existing muscle mass. So it's a very unique thing that happens. Now, like, you cannot get that from creatine. Why?

Well, what is creatine? Creatine in its simplest terms is an energy source. It's not as simple as this, but it's like it's closer like the way I was talking about carbohydrates and fat. But it's like this super, it's like nitro. Like if you ever played video games as a kid, it's like a nitro boost. Yes, well, I play Donkey Kong in a cat, man. But if you think about like a knight, like it's like this boost. And what it is basically is that when you eat creatine, which comes from red meat, some fish, or you supplement it, it gets stored in your muscle tissue.

Okay, I know that. As this thing called phosphocreatine. And then what happens is when you're doing different types of exercise, you know, you're familiar with aerobic and anaerobic exercise. That's different times you get from running. And basically it's about how your body converts sugars and carbohydrates to create this thing called ATP. Well, when you're lifting weights or you're doing something really intense, you're doing pull-ups,

or you're doing bench press, or you're squatting, your body is not thinking about aerobic and anaerobic energy systems. There's this energy system called the phosphocreotene. energy system. And basically what it does is it takes the phosphocreatine that is stored in your muscle and it converts, it uses it to very quickly convert ATP more quickly. So when you have more phosphocreatine in your muscle, you're able to oftentimes do two more pull-ups, two more reps of that, whatever way you were at before. Yeah, you're basically able to lift more and do more intense exercise. So creatine's real benefit is for strength training. It is going to make it to where you can do

strength training better because you have more energy stored in your muscle to lift more weights and to do more, you know, intense exercise. That is its primary, most study benefit. Now, there's a whole set of like cognitive benefits we can get into. What about the cognitive benefits and the brain health? And people are now are like upping it from five milligrams to 10 milligrams because of the brain. Yeah. So let's get it. I mean, that's also good. And there is some good signs for that. Although I would just caution and say a lot of it is overstated and overmarketed. Really? And there are really good things. And I am a person who takes 10 grams a day for very specific reasons.

But so just one last thing. So comparison between the aminos and the creatine. The aminos are going to protect and build your muscle, even if you don't exercise and makes tons of sense to just take generally for that reason. And they are ultimately going to correct and overcome the anabolic resistance that comes from aging. When you get older and you can't utilize this protein that you used to use as well, and you need more essential amino acids.

You particularly need a higher dose of leucine with them, which again, I think when we get to like formulas, I'll explain why this matters. Creatine will never do that. More chicken will never do that. The only thing that will do that is a leucine-en-enriched essential amino acid. It's the only thing that is going to help your body gin

to maintain and build that muscle. Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentus 3. I've been using their protein, their creatine, and omega-3 combo for months now, and the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health and performance, but hard to get enough of through diet alone. The crea-pure creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass-fed weight tastes great with no weird after-taste, and their omega-3 is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy, my recovery,

and my overall well-being has really improved. So if you want better performance, this is the way to go. Visit livemometus.com and use my code, Jen, for 35% off your first subscription. That's livemometus.com code gen for 35% off your first subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did. What about branch chain amino? Like the BCAAs that we all hear.

We've heard those. Yeah, so branch chain amino acids are basically a stepping stone in the research around amino acids. Got it. Okay. That at one point in time, we thought if you consume them, it's basically just the three. It's three very important essential amino acids. Oh, okay. You need all nine, it's only three of them.

And in the progress of research at one point in time, 20 years ago, we thought 25 years ago, at least now, We thought the research community that maybe you could just take them. In the same way I'm saying, you know, these essential amino acids are way better than way protein. At one point in time, we thought maybe those branch chain, those BCAAs were. And what's been uncovered is they're not. They're insufficient. If you take them on their own, there's zero anabolic impact. That's interesting.

And there's even potentially catabolic impact. But a lot of people have built businesses around them. A hundred percent. And so there's a ton of money in it. And so people still understand it. And so people are still making products and selling it. That's really good info because that's the, like, you know, when people were like, are gym rats or people who are really into like health and fitness, they're like,

they take their BCAAs, they take their El carnitine, they take all these things that like maybe most people don't maybe know about. Yeah. So you're saying those BCAAs are just three aminos, what you, like what we're talking about are nine aminos. Yeah. Which is. It's inclusive of those three. Of course. But it would be like if you're trying to run a football team, And you only had a... We forgot the quarterback. No, you had like the... Oh, we're gonna...

This whole team, all we need is the quarterback, the running back, and the wide receiver. And it's like, well, like, where's your offensive line that's like protecting all these guys? Right, right, right. You're gonna get crushed. And so that's what happened is you get crushed.

Okay, that's interesting. I like to... Thank you for telling me that because I didn't know that. And actually, people were asking me when I was talking about me starting to take aminos now in my water and like how I met you and I really liked all the stuff. They're like, I take BCAs. I'm like, oh, okay, I think.

Let me find out about it. You know what I mean? Okay. So my next big question to you is for every decade. I know that I think you're saying every decade the amount of protein we need are different. What happens? Can you kind of talk and tell us about what we need in our 30s, 40s, 50s, and so forth? Yes. So when you eat protein and you're younger, your body's more optimized to get the essential amino acids out of it. Yes. We know that when we're 20s, I don't care about the 20s, to be honest. I know, it's, yeah. And... No offense to the people who are 20 listening. And it actually goes back to this... It's a quick connection to this BCAA conversation. The quarterback is this one amino acid called leucine.

And I would say it's like the quarterback. And we used to think... Yeah, you bring it up a lot. Yeah. What if you just take leucine, right? And it's like, it doesn't work. You can't run a whole football team with just your quarterback. Right.

It doesn't work. But as we get older, what happens is two things. One, how our ability to digest the protein degrades. So when you're 50, you don't... digest the protein as well as you did when you were 20. But more importantly, even when you digest that protein, like you eat the chicken and it gets broken down, the amino acids go into your blood, your body doesn't read the signal as strong. It's like it, it knows that there's the essential amino acids there. It sees that there's some leucine, but it's just kind of like timid. It's like it doesn't

really, right? Yeah. And exactly why that is, there's not a very clear explanation. It's more It's more like it's a behavior in the body that we have observed, and that's very clear. Okay. And so what we realize then is like, well, then your body needs a higher dose of protein at once or a higher dose of essential amino acids and ultimately a higher dose of this leucine all at once in order to get a better response. And what we found over many studies is that if you just increase that leucine, you'll actually overcome all of the resistance.

So I'm going to give you an example, and I'm going to go back. I'm going to tell you the 20, 30, 40, 50 thing. So, as I said earlier, when you take essential amino acids, it's about three times the impact as weight protein. Right. Right, gram for gram. Yeah. When you're 60, if you add more lucine to that formula of those essential amino acids, it's six times the impact as the way protein. Wow.

And so, like, why is that? Did, like, the amino acids get more powerful, you know, what happened? No. Our body's ability to utilize the amino acids. amino acids in the way protein goes down. And we get worse and worse at utilizing it. We're just simply not as sensitive to it. But that extra signal, like basically spiking it with more of that lucene, our body's like, oh, I see it. It basically can read the signal and it can understand it. So as you get older, this importance around either eating more protein or the importance of

getting higher amounts of lucine in an essential amino acid supplement or as part of your protein powder, whatever it is, it is going to overcome that. And so really, the guide is this. It's less like exactly how much protein you need to eat, which I can give you a guide for. But what I would say is a lucine-en-enriched essential amino acid, just like basically, like Keonaminos is 40% lucene. That's the threshold you need to hit.

Okay. When you are in your 20s, it's going to be about three times as impactful as weight protein. By the time you're 40, it's about four times. By the time you're 50, it's about five times. And we've seen very clearly in studies that in your 60s, three grams of leucine-en-riched essential amino acids has the same impact as 20 grams of weight protein,

over six times the impact. Wow. So it's like this tiny, like one scoop, you know, is equal to 30 grams of way protein. And we already saw before, too, it's worth even more than like steak. You know, it's going to be the equivalent to 60 or more grams of like a steak protein. Then why are people not talking about aminos,

and they're always talking about creatine. Like in middle age, I'm talking. I think that there's just always different, I mean, this is like, maybe I'm being too cynical here, but it's like, it's marketing trends. But like, why is creatine suddenly being talked about? Like, creatine is... Been around forever.

Creatine's been around forever. But this is an interesting also situation, because you could say the same thing about creatine five years ago. When the ISSN, International Society of Sports Nutrition did their report on creatine, I think they had like 120 studies cited. When they did it on essential amino acids, they had 137. Really?

So we're talking like, we're talking a scope of something that's been studied a lot, you know, not like on par with something like creatine. But five years ago, no one was selling creatine to middle-aged women. Like no one even talked about it. It was just as beneficial to them. It made just as much sense. Simply, they're marketing in business trends that come and go and develop. And sometimes they're great.

Like, I would say creatine is a great supplement that makes a lot of sense for middle-aged people to start taking. And particularly women who were never marketed it before. If they work out. If they work out. So if a woman is listening to this. Well, but you should. Listen. Now, you should.

You're preaching to the converted. Okay. I understand that. Trust me. Yeah. But if someone is not working out, right? Is it we're taking creatine? Like, if they're just doing hikes and walks, they're not lifting heavy way.

They're doing hikes and walks. They're doing hikes and walks and an occasional Pilates class. Do they need to take creatine? First of all, you don't need to take anything. Right. Life, there's all kinds of ways of doing life, but what I would say is you're going to get a lot less benefit from it. The primary benefits that I think you're going to get in terms of body composition

and being stronger over the course of your life is going to be from taking creatine and doing strength training. Those two together are where you get the bulk of the benefits. and where there's been the most amount of research. Right. Quick caveat, there is research for cognitive benefits. What I would say, though, is taking creatine is not just going to, like, make you smarter.

Basically, in the same way that your muscle stores these phosphocreatine stores to, like, create energy quickly, your brain does the same thing. If you give yourself enough creatine, and that's why you have to take these much larger doses, because your muscle absorbs most of it, there's enough extra left over to put into your brain, then under duress.

so you're really sleep deprived, for example, or you're under some kind of like crazy stress. It's really, we don't have a study for stress. We have a study, we have studies specifically for sleep deprivation. Then your ability to focus, and for memory, there are some slight improvements. There are improvements to focus in memory. And that's why I take it and I experience it.

It's kind of like my insurance for whether I slept good or not that night. Really? And originally I was just taking 10 grams on days when I didn't sleep well, and I built it into a habit where it's like, I take it every day because it's like a, a slight cognitive edge, particularly under stress. Okay. When you look at older adults, it's much higher doses.

We're looking at 25 grams a day, so five scoops. Like, that's a lot more than a typical person takes. It has this impact in older adults in the elderly to improve things like memory and focus. It doesn't improve overall executive functioning, and there are not studies that it prevents or corrects dementia. That is not something that is real. The studies that have been around there, like even in like a dementia-based population, is they just showed that there were increased creatine stores in the brain, which we would think

and know already. If you take a bunch of creatine, you're going to store more in the brain. So I think I just share that because I think these studies, these claims get stretched and pushed and, like, I'm, you know, my company makes creatine. I love creatine. I take it every day. But you've got to be, like, real with people about what it actually does. And doesn't do. And not, like, mislead people. Well, listen, recently, my mother, like last year, got diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which has been really horrible. I'm really sorry, Jen. Thank you. And I was all about this creatine. Like, oh, she takes 40 grams, but 50 grams, you know, would it really help? And honestly, I've spoken to so many different doctors who are, like, the best in the world in brain health and Alzheimer's. And they're like, that's a myth

that creatine is actually helpful for things like that. Like, when you're younger, it can help you with brain fog and cognitive, you know, all the cognitive things. But once you hit, like, if you, if you have that gene or if you're already like on that path creatine's not going to it's not coming to save you it's not saving well and the only slight modification i make to that it's like i i try to enter everything with like humility and i would just say like it hasn't been proven yet yeah like people act like that is a thing right and there is no data that shows that and so giving people that hope it's just people wanting to like have a smart take on something i know but it's so dangerous i know because you've got these, and here's an interesting context, and this has got to be for a whole other conversation.

Okay. But is, if there is something that does help prevent that. Okay. The number one thing I would look at is omega-3s. Yes, we talked about this. But this is going to be a whole other podcast. But with Omega-3s, they do have long-term epidemiological data that shows that greater intake of omega-3s and thus greater amounts of your red blood cells being made of them

is directly correlated to, I can't remember it's a full. I can't remember if it's a 15 or 20% reduction in, like, the risk of dementia. So that's pretty significant. So I would say if your mom was being diagnosed and you want to avoid it, like I would start taking a higher dose of a high quality omega-3 every day. Like that is a real thing. Creatine has not been shown to do that. Well, exactly. I was going to say, I got my blood work back and I did talk about that. And then that's what really was the outcome. Like, omega-3 may help move the needle, but creatine, that's just very much like,

it's kind of like a wives tale, like a myth at this point. There's no real data that, I don't even know how it happened or where it happened. Well, there are, there's at least one study where they measured. Talking of benefits. There are definitely studies giving it to older people to improve things like focus and short-term memory. But not dementia memory. We're talking about totally different type of memory function. That was my point.

But then there's another study where they gave it to people, with dementia, and they measured if they had, like, increased phosphocreatine in the brain, which they did. It'd be like measuring, like, hey, if I give you, if I give you this creatine, is there more in your brain? Yeah. And they show that, like, yes, there is. And it was in a population that had dementia. And so then people stretch that to say, like, oh, it's got all these other benefits that this other study showed. It's just people, honestly, it's people who I think don't know how to read studies and or are more focused on doing marketing and trying to get attention and having a hot take, then, like, actually...

If it behooves them in a way to talk about it. Yeah. Okay, so answer me, riddle me this. If it was one, okay? And this is not... And this is, you sell both, creatine and aminos. So it's people, he's not biased here. If you can only take one, if you're a 50-year-old...

Aminos. I love it. If you're a 40-year-old. Aminos. Okay, if you're a 60-year-old. Aminos. So aminos. Over creatine every single time.

Absolutely. Like for my parents today, for my mid-40s wife, for me, for, like, if you just look at the research around it and around the benefits you're going to get from it, like that's the one that I would choose. That said, the first thing I do every single morning is I take aminos and creatine together. So it's they don't have to be. You're not choosing. I'm not choosing. I'm not trying to get someone to start a new habit because this is the big thing. We actually started this towards the beginning of this conversation.

You're saying someone starts taking a cell. supplement, and they just keep taking it. Exactly my point. Which honestly, adherence is the biggest part of health. We can debate all day what the best exercise is or what the best blah blah is, but it's like, what are you willing to do every day? And what I would say is like if you're, if I'm just trying to help someone just do one more thing every day, like there's one nutritional change I would make one supplement to take, I would absolutely always tell them, take the aminos in all these cases we gave. Then I would say do the creatine. Then once they started taking the aminos every day and they started getting those benefits, and they're like, hey, is there like anything else I should take?

Immediately I'd be like, creatine or omega. Like those are the ones where I'm like, hey, these are things that... Aminoes is your number one. That's my number one. Okay, by the way, if you take aminos when you're fasting, does it satiate you or can you... Yes. So is there like some type of study or any type of like data on if you are a person who fast and you also take aminos? Does it satiate you?

Does it help you keep your lean muscle? I'm not a fasting person, but I know a lot of people do these fasts. Yeah. So here's the, I think, like, really interesting data on this. Okay. When you go through any extended period of time, and again, if you're 20 years old, this doesn't matter. If you're over 40, this matters a lot more. So, like, listen up.

Like, fasting is different for us as we get older. When you go a few hours without consuming protein and you stress the body even greater through something like exercise, right? You are provoking the body to want to break down muscle tissue to supply. the rest of the body with amino acids. Like you were you were provoking the body to do that. And so if you don't want to do that and you want to maintain your lean muscle, then it is crucial that you think about timing and you try to consume amino acids,

either via a piece of salmon, protein shake, or essential amino acids every few hours throughout the day, regardless of whether you're like doing some kind of extended fast or not. And if you're doing extended fasting, then you definitely, like, you're having even more stress-induced physiological state. Does it break your fast, though? No, it doesn't break your fast. Right, because the blood sugar and all the things. It's not spiking your blood sugar.

I mean, all this thing about breaking your fast, it's like, how do you even define it? But there's no digestive, there's like zero digestive stress. It's not having some kind of spike on your blood sugar. And more importantly, and this is getting into like a bit more of like the cell impacts, but there have been studies that have shown that taking essential amino, again, Lucene and rich essential amino acids, stimulates more mitochondrial biogenesis than fasting alone. So if you actually take it, you are encouraging your body to develop new mitochondria. Now, this is not like a human out. This is not like a human study. These are like in vitro type

studies. But all of these, all of these types of cell-based studies are, you know, cell-based studies. How about for, and just overall, if you, does it, because it helps you feel satiated and if you eat it, if you, sorry, if you you drink it or take the supplements, would you, would it help satiate you to a place where you're not as hungry to eat junk food because of that, like I eat a lot of protein, right? Because I don't want to eat, like, it satiates me. It's the only thing that satiates me and keeps my blood sugar stable, right? Would I have that same benefit or same? Yes. Yeah. The simple answer is that basically the essential amino acids are hitting those same types of cues. Yeah. That help satiate, like that need to try to basically get your protein requirements met.

Yeah. On top of that, and this goes a little bit more into like how mood gets regulated, et cetera. Yes, yes, yes. So when you take an amino acid supplement, and this would matter, again, around formula, but when it has these higher amounts of phenylalanine in it, we're getting a little nerdy here relative to like very low tryptophan, it actually improves and increases the amount of dopamine levels in your brain that also have this more like alert, focused, attentive level to it.

So when you think about like not being hungry, part of it is like, you know, blood sugar. Part of it's feeling kind of cranky. So part of it's having your actual like neurotransmitter balance being slightly off and feeling kind of sleepy. Like there's a lot of things that are going on. And there's like hunger hormones that are getting triggered. And so amino acids are playing on multiple levels all at once.

It's not like just one thing is happening. I just find it so interesting how it's completely so under the radar. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where, again, I think you could say the exact same thing for creatine five years ago. to Gen Pop. Five years ago, any 20-year-old Jimbrough knows what creatine is. Everybody did. But, like, my wife did.

I mean, like, she maybe heard, like, her high school boyfriend took her, but she didn't know what it was. And now, every single one of her friends, you know. And now they're all interested. Now she's like, you've been making creatine all these years? I was like, yeah, I've been making creatine all these years. Isn't that funny? But I know a lot of women who are also don't want to take creatine because there's such

a stigma against. Like, people think it's a Jimbrough, you know, meathead type of supplement. because I remember when they were in high school that their boyfriends were taking it and they were getting really buff. Yeah, and there's like fear of like bloating and water retention and there's probably even fear of like maybe building too much muscle.

Like there's all kinds of ideas. Or like bulking up. Yeah. Balking up. Yeah. Which I would just say that's another interesting point about creatine research is that what has been shown is that creatine absolutely increases

like strength gains in women, but almost little to no hypertrophy, meaning the muscle mass doesn't actually get bigger. Really? Yeah, isn't that interesting? That is. Yeah, it's like, which is kind of normal in general between men and women. Now, all people are different, and you have dudes who can't put on muscle,

you have women who can put on muscle really easily. But typically, men build more mass more quickly. So it's not, it's pretty in alignment with, like, general biology of men and women. Would you say that, that amino acids would have the same, like, can it bloat you like creatine? Or there's no side effects? There is no. There's no, I mean, and again, I would caution people about, like the ideas of bloating on creatine

and potentially you should maybe take less. But there is an aspect of creatine is drawing more water with it into the muscle. Got it. And thus you're having more intracellular water in the muscle and your muscles actually filling up more with water. So your muscles are getting a little bit bigger, a little bit puffier.

Right, right, right, right. Whereas like with aminos, there is none of that. There is no, you're not drawing any more water into the muscle. You're literally just replacing the older muscle fibers with newer, better ones. and if you're doing it with exercising, especially too, like you're pushing the amino acids into the muscle. I know you said earlier about taking your amino's first thing,

or before you work out, right? Does it really matter if you take them at night or if you take them in the afternoon? This is one of those tough things where it's like, from like a brand perspective, or if I was trying to like sell the product, it's like when, any time. Just take them every day.

Just take them every day. Just take them every day. Make it a habit. Make it a habit. It doesn't matter. Exactly. You know, it's like for me, in my little customized life,

It's like I like taking it first thing in the morning because I'm not really hungry first thing in the morning. But I want the benefits of that of what protein gives me first thing in the morning. It sets up my day well. So I'm getting this hyper-concentrated form of that immediately. And then I can wait a couple hours until I eat. So it sustains that, it sustains that, like that, satiate like that. Oh, yeah. I feel great.

Yeah. And it gives me. And so I'm not intentionally trying to, I'm not like trying to be a fasting person, but I guess I naturally do, right? like I don't eat first thing in the morning, but we all fast to some, to some degree, you don't eat all the time, right? Yeah. You go through, we're joking yesterday, right? I know, I don't know about that.

I like to eat all the time. I like to eat too, yeah. So, I mean, it does. It helps satiate me and, like, for me, that's a really good habit. So, like, I always know I'm going to take it first thing in the morning. And then after that, it becomes, you know, I talked another time with you where it's like sometimes I know I want to eat, I need to eat, I need to eat by only have so much time. I'm going to try to eat some fiber, vegetables and fruits, and I want to

get some protein in, but I don't want to eat five eggs. Yes. So it's like I eat a couple eggs and I take some aminos with it. And so it can also be taken with food to basically enhance the total amino acid intake of that food, to enhance the protein quality of that food. That's what I do actually in the morning. Now I've been eating my eggs because it's part of my habit. Like I habit stack it, right? So I have my eggs and my fruit. And then like maybe like 40 minutes later, I have my little mixture of my aminos and then I work out. That's great. Yeah, that's what I do. That's great. And Again, what's most important is if you do it every day. Exactly.

With anything, with anything in life. With anything at life. Anything has to be consistent. If you do with anything once in a while does nothing. People always, you know, people ask all the time, well, what's the most effective exercise, the one that you actually do? That's it. That's the bottom line, right?

Like, I can tell you to do this, that, the other thing, but if you hate it and you don't do it, it doesn't matter. So you have to be consistent with everything that you want any kind of results with. Is there anything else about aminos that I'm forgetting to ask you that is really relevant and important that people can really benefit from? I think just like in this kind of conversation, we've like circled around it and talked about a lot, but I would just say if this is actually something

that someone wants to look into, like, you know, what's like the right product to get, right? We come on here and we talk about this educationally, right? But like what's the version I should get? I would just offer a guide to like how to find the right amino acid supplement. Go ahead. And the first thing I would start with is, this doesn't necessarily have to be true for every single product out there,

but for amino acids, proprietary blends are bad. What that means is if you look at the back of an amino acid label, and it says five grams essential amino acids, and then it just lists the amino acids, but doesn't tell you how much of each one, do not buy that product. Really? And the reason for that is because the proportions of amino acids really matter, and we'll get into that in a second, right?

Like, I'll tell you what the right proportions are, but they really matter. Like, all these things we've been talking about today, these are based off of a very open public debate and set of different research groups doing studies, critiquing the other person's study, trying another study. It's pretty clear what the formulas should be. And there's no good reason to hide it and the proportions of them really matter. And I can get into that in a second about why. But the other point I would say is when it's hidden like that, it's just for business reasons.

I'll just tell you that. I have some proprietary blend and I can tell you whatever my blah, blah, blah, marketing story is about it, but it also enables me to have much looser quality specs. I don't have to meet label claim on exactly how much amino acid is in there. I can change the amount of each amino acid with each batch if I want to because I don't, I'm not held to any specific thing. All I have to do is make sure there's five grams in there. I can use cheaper sources.

I can use different amounts of like the potency. It is, it's a hack if you're trying to like have much more flexibility around your quality standards. So when you see proprietary blend. on amino acids, I wouldn't... You would run. You definitely want it to tell you the exact amount of each one. So that's number one.

Number two is you need all nine to be listed. Yeah. Right? So it's like... Not simply... Just three or and some just do eight and they say like... That's weird. Histamine is conditional.

Histodine is conditional and it's like it's not. Like it's... Again, there's lots of... If there's anyone that's the least important for... Particularly for muscle protein synthesis, it's triptophan. And you're going to see it should be the lowest and at the bottom. And that's because it's the least important. but definitely not like leaving out histidine or any amino acids.

Well, I think it's really important that you said that, and I'll tell you why. I've talked about this many times on the show is that because it's the Wild Wild West in the supplement space, you have to be extremely discerning of where you get your supplements from. So the fact that I know you, I know how you source, I know your manufacturing, I know you as a human being, you're only doing the highest level of everything possible, the quality, the way you do everything. super important, not just with your aminos, but with the creatine and with omegas. Like we had a whole conversation last night over the omegas. I think to me, knowing where you're getting your stuff in general is extremely important.

And so like Keon, I know is at that high standard, but people should be like do their research. And that was a great point that you said about looking in the back for the aminos because people just take things at face value and they think, oh, this company is selling aminos. Is there what this one's exactly the same as that one? Not true. It's not true. And often sometimes even like maybe someone you respect or I respect and like that has a platform that's on board and promotes a brand or something. And it's like you got to, you got to look at the label yourself.

Like you got to do some of your own research on it and look at the label. Of course, you can't rely on what's go out there. And that's what I'm saying like I did my own research and that's the thing like people can trust me but not they can trust me to an extent. They should also like look on their own, right? Yeah. That's a very important part of it. But also, I didn't ask you. I've been remiss to ask you and I was curious. It's probably a whole other

podcast, too, collagen. Because collagen is also one of these very spoken about supplements. Everyone's taking collagen. There's a lot of misrepresentation of how good or bad collagen is. Like, some say it's garbage as a supplement. Some say it's not garbage. What's your take? So I'm going to answer the collagen question, but I want to finish it by doing a segue from the formula thing. One last point, because I mentioned Lucene so many times. Oh my God, did you ever? But here's the last thing. When you look at the label, and I'll just, I'll give you a shortcut on this.

Like, you don't, no one needs to buy, you don't have to buy Keion or whatever. But it really is the, but it's the formula that's key on. And basically, it's based off of. And by the way, you guys should buy Keon. I'm not just saying that. The reason why he's on here is not because he is the leader in this area. I'm not putting on some, like, mediocre person. He's doing it right.

And that, to me, is why you're here. So, anyway, continue on. So it's like the proportions of the amino acids, They're based on human skeletal muscle within very specific increases to certain amino acids. You get lucine to 40%, you increase the isolucine and the valine, and you increase to match their original proportions. And I'm getting nerdy here. Now you're losing people at this point.

I know, but I'm just telling you if you do the, or trust me or whatever, but I'm trying to give you the research. And increase the lysine, because the licein is slower to get into the muscle tissue. And that's how we end up with that formula. And then you don't need any other stuff in it. If it's flavored, it should be flavored with clean stuff. You don't need other fancy mumbo-jumbo, whatever they're new. whatever the thing is. Whatever they're trying to sell that week,

you need the nine essential amino acids. Okay, that's what it is, in those proportions. Okay, so now collagen. So with collagen, it's an interesting idea, and I think the hypothesis is, like, what made sense to pursue, which is, hey, like, our skin has a lot of collagen in it, and it's made up of collagen, a certain type of protein,

and so is, like, joint tissue, et cetera. What if we ate a bunch of another animal's collagen, like we literally ground up the collagen of an animal, would that then help our body develop more? Do you sell collagen? I don't sell collagen. Okay. There you go.

That's all I need to know. Yeah. That's all I need to know. Thank you. Thank you. So it's an interesting idea and it hasn't been proven out very well. Thank you. It has not been proven out very well.

There are studies by the collagen industry specifically that show improvements. But what I would say is that if, yeah, like, it's just very light. Just tell us right directly. Okay, fine. I want to click. I want to clip this one because I think it's important. Yeah. What are the main benefits of taking amino?

Go. Lean muscle, overall improved metabolism, better skin, hair, nails, and mood. So six. I mean, that's what comes to my- Recovery. Recovery. Energy during exercise. Incredible recovery from exercise. Energy. I'm going to tell you one more.

Yeah. What's another? Body composition. Yeah, I mean, and that was my attitude around like lean muscle and metabolism. is basically it's going to help you to maintain lean muscle and burn more calories. And so that's less fat, more muscle. People like that. People like less fat more muscle, don't they? I mean, typically, most of us are trying to get. I think so. All right, Angelo, thank you for being on this show. I think this is probably like a very long podcast. Yeah, it's about an hour and a half

more. Oh, my gosh. I know. Well, thanks for almost more. Sorry for joining on Jan and everyone else. I know. Well, you didn't drone that much. I stopped you at the last drone. I know. But, okay, guys, so Kian, I know you're not really much on Instagram, which I don't do. I don't do the personal branding. You're not interested in that. He's, this is what I like about this guy. He's not interested in promoting himself. He is here because he really truly believes in what he does and his company and what he, like, and the production and the benefits. And I really admire that because everyone here is always like promoting themselves like, blah, blah, blah. You don't give a rat's ass. You want people to know about the benefits of aminos. built a whole company around it. And so anyway, I'm happy I've sat down with you. I've learned a lot.

I hope you guys at home or wherever you are have learned why aminos are so invaluable for your life. And if they want to know more about Keon or Aminos or whatever else you have going on in the Keon world, where can they find you? This place called the Internet. Oh, the Internet. Oh, Internet. No, okay. I don't mean if it's sound like a smart ass. But for real, I mean, like we're on Instagram at Keon. obviously have a website. It's get kion.com, G-E-T-K-I-O-N.com. And I think there's a special link for your

audience. Yes, there is a special link if you guys want to try it. I don't even know it. We'll figure it out. But I will tell you something. Once you start it, you're going to be hooked because it is a no-brainer. I know we called it a hack, but it's a strategy, a tool. I don't care. Use whatever euphemism you want. It's really, really good. It works. It works, exactly. So thank you. Thanks, Jen.