Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2432: The Truth About Essential Amino Acids with Angelo Keely

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

The Truth About Essential Amino Acids with Angelo Keely Coming back to his roots. Angelo’s background, personal story, and how he got involved with Kion. (1:37) Breaking down the role and importance of essential amino acids (EAAs). (9:39) The fundamental importance of building and maintaining lean muscle as we age. (13:05) The nuance in daily protein intake. (16:53) What leads to protein muscle synthesis? (20:37) What is the most anabolic whole source of protein? (27:56) Is a high protein diet less important in a bulk than it is in a cut? (28:30) How much does the intensity of your training dictate this? (30:56) Why supplement with essential amino acids over taking protein powder? (34:57) Questioning the validity of these studies. (44:20) The value of protein for someone who is injured or hurt. (51:19) The best time to take EAAs. (58:24) The difference between BCAAs and EAAs. (1:04:04) Sharing in a fair context. (1:10:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned Get 20% off Kion at getkion.com/mindpump Visit NASM for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! 50% off PES (Performance Enhancement Specialization) ** Code MPMPES at checkout ** September Promotion: MAPS Starter | Starter Bundle 50% off! ** Code SEPTEMBER50 at checkout ** Increased Protein Intake in Military Special Operations International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Effects of essential amino acid supplementation on exercise and performance Resistance training and timed essential amino acids protect against the loss of muscle mass and strength during 28 days of bed rest and energy deficit Daily Consumption of a Specially Formulated Essential Amino Acid-Based Dietary Supplement Improves Physical Performance in Older Adults With Low Physical Functioning Nutritional interventions during bed rest and spaceflight: prevention of muscle mass and strength loss, bone resorption, glucose intolerance, and cardiovascular problems Branched-chain amino acids and muscle protein synthesis in humans: myth or reality? Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources Featured Guest/People Mentioned Kion (@kion) Instagram Layne Norton, Ph.D. (@biolayne) Instagram  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcasts. This is mind pump, all right? This episode is a unique one.

Rarely do we get our minds changed when it comes to fitness topics. It happens sometimes, but today it happened in a big way. So we had somebody come on, Angelo Keely, talk to us about essential amino acids and you've probably heard us say supplementing with them is probably a waste of time. He brought some studies and made a case that changed our minds. So today's episode we're talking about the truth about essential amino acids. It's actually quite remarkable.

In fact, I'm using them myself right now. Anyway, if you wanna use essential amino acids, go to Keyon, they're the best ones, they have the best ratios, high and loose seen, all the branch amino acids, and all the essential amino acids, and you can get 20% off by going to this link, getkeyon.com, that's G-E-T-K-I-O-N.com forward slash mind pump. That link will get you 20% off.

Now this episode is brought to you by NASM. This is the world's best premier national certification for personal trainers. And right now, if you go to NASMPT.com, you can get 50% off the performance enhancement specialization certifications great certification for trainers who want to train athletes or people to improve their athletic Performance also this month we have a sale on some workout programs Maps starter 50% off This is a beginner strength training program and the starter bundle this includes Maps anabolic Maps Prime and the intuitive nutrition guide

That's also 50% off. If you're interested, go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code September50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show. Angela, welcome to the show. Sal, thanks for having me. So you're here representing Keon. Give us a little background of yourself

and then tell us a little bit about Keon before we get into the conversation. Today, we're really going to talk about a subject that we've been on either side of. We have some pretty strong opinions on essential amino acids. That's what you're here to talk about mainly, but give us a little background and tell us a little about Keon before we get into that. First of all, I love to be here because I have thought of you historically as essential amino acid skeptics.

Yes. I'm like, yes, man, we're going to go ride the belly of the beast and talk about it and see what shakes out. I think it's become way more of a hot topic. It'd be good. It'd be good to dig into the science and see what's legit and what's not. I guess my personal story of how I ended up here, how did I end up here? I was raised in a family that was super into natural health.

Like we were just talking about right before we started recording. I grew up in Austin. I was born in a little town outside Austin by two very hippie people. My dad actually was like an importer of botanicals, like ginseng in the 70s. Oh wow, that was hard to get back then too. Yeah, and a bunch of other botanicals. And then theyeng in the 70s. Oh wow. That was hard to get back then too.

Yeah, and a bunch of other botanicals. And then they ended up having a natural health food store, natural health food restaurant. I was born at home. I didn't get a birth certificate until I was seven. All like whole natural foods, but also lots of vitamins and supplements and no over-the-counter drugs, none of that stuff.

And my parents also curiously chose to be pescatarian. I think it was like a thing in like Austin at that time. That said, because they were knowledgeable, they knew that protein nutrition was important. So we talked about it like a lot. Like we talked about combining different types of plant proteins if we weren't eating eggs or dairy. Even as a kid.

No, I'm like four years old and like I knew like, no, Angie, you have to combine the beans and the rice, the lentils and the quinoa, because these things are incomplete on their own. Because of the amino acid combinations. Yeah, I mean, that was the conversation as a kid. Interesting. So I think any of us, you grow up in an environment, and you don't really know that it's unique or different or special.

We're all kind of brainwashed by our parents to some degree, right? I go into school and clearly now it's weird. The stuff I bring to lunch is weird. I have a little piece of salmon, broccoli and stuff and other kids get to eat gushers and stuff. But as I grow older, probably the other tendencies in my family are that they were very entrepreneurial, thus a bit manic, kind of intense, very alternative. And that's in me. So I say the same spirits in me. So I start experimenting. I'm pushing away pretty early

from my family, getting really into social stuff, getting into high school, getting into drugs. Of course, food comes into that. I'm going to McDonald's with friends now. That's how you rebel. Yeah, that's how I rebel. It's more wild than McDonald's, but that was part of it. I think there was a pinnacle moment when I was 16 and a half.

It was the day after my sophomore year. I took too much LSD. I was 16 and a half, it was the day after my sophomore year, I took too much LSD, I was with a friend, I took too much LSD kind of like twice that evening and I just lost my mind and I was in a part of town that wasn't the best part of town and it was in a kind of public environment and I upset, pissed off these people that were more hardcore than me. I mean, I was coming from like kind of a more scared place. But I upset them and unintentionally provoke them. And they just beat the shit out of me. And they stabbed me twice in the back. Wow. Shit.

And they stabbed me in the knee. So, you know, while you're on LSD in the middle of the worst trip you can possibly melting. God. Horrible. Yeah. So that in itself could be a bad experience, but, uh, adding getting stabbed to that. Did you even know what was happening? Were you aware that you were being hit and stabbed or? I have like moments of consciousness that I remember after that, but it's not like I don't, I don't, I still don't like piece it together like perfectly. Yeah. Um, and obviously, I mean, I've done a ton of therapy

and other types of like modalities to try to like put my life together, put my mind together, be able to be present. But yeah, I have a huge scar down my abdomen from having emergency abdominal surgery. My patellar tendon had to be reattached. It was like totally severed. And I wake up in the hospital a week later and I'm just totally black and blue and I've

got staples all over me and I'm 16 and a half. And it's like the biggest just introduction I think to adulthood that I've ever heard of personally. It's from someone I know where it's just like, man, all of the decisions you make or you don't make create your life. It's like I've been given certain things by my family, beliefs they gave me and opportunities and school and all that, but now the decisions I make,

they're gonna manifest the rest of my life. And later I was diagnosed with PTSD and obviously like went through a lot to try to fix it. And I think at that moment, I really was like, man, I'm gonna like, it wasn't a perfect path, right? It's been very messy. That was, I'm 40 now, so that was 24 years ago. It wasn't a perfect path, but it became like,

I'm really gonna try. Like I'm really gonna try to be as healthy as I can be, like emotionally, mentally, physically. And at that time, I rediscovered protein as one piece of that. I mean, obviously I rediscovered like therapy or discovered therapy for the first time and discovered meditation and yoga and breath work and a bunch of other stuff. I discovered how important my daily protein intake was to my recovery. I had lost a ton of muscle mass and I was just really weak and I couldn't really do stuff. I mean, I lost, I don't remember exactly how many pounds, like probably 30 pounds in the process, and I wasn't a fat dude before that. So I really started paying attention to my protein intake and that's when I started

like taking whey protein powder and thinking more about how I was training, et cetera. And over the next several years, I experimented with all different types of diets and I was in Austin too, which is like a hotbed of natural, you know, health ideas and health and fitness and stuff like that. So I had a lot of opportunities to pursue a lot of different ideas. And, you know, I think got a lot healthier, a lot fitter again, and from a place that was like,

again, not like what my parents made me think, like you need to eat these foods and we all go to the gym and, you know, but like for me, and maybe circuitously, I went in a lot of different ways after that. I lived overseas for several years, I moved to France, had a whole career over there, went to India, moved back to the States, moved to Boulder where I live now, ran a behavioral healthcare company for a few years. And then the way it seems like what happened is I kind of just came back to my roots.

I mean, there was a way in which I had been raised in a family that really cared about nutrition, particularly really cared about talking and thinking about protein nutrition, and I wound up starting this like protein kind of centric supplement company in 2017. And in that journey, naturally, like I thought I knew a lot already, like I thought I knew a lot already. I thought I knew a lot about the subject. And when you really try to dig into it and then start to work with the leading scientists and researchers in the field and read all their work and hire them to teach you and to work with you, you learn a lot more.

And so through that journey, I've had the experience of getting to iterate on different types of formulas to really understand what is inside protein powders and essential amino acid supplements what's important and what really the leading research has shown over the last few years and So I think that's why I'm here today any any big epiphanies for somebody who has So much information knowledge experience sleep from four years old on with protein, understanding all that, then all of a sudden you get into building a company around it, you're probably diving in the studies, anything that jumps out right away like,

oh shit, all these years I thought this, didn't realize that. The biggest thing I think that a lot of people don't realize is that essential amino acids in protein, in food that you eat, is not only important because your body can't synthesize it, which is typically what we talk about and explore. It's like, oh, there's not essential amino acids, which your body can actually make if

you consume the essential. But the essential are the ones you have to eat because if you don't, you die, which is true. But essential amino acids are not only this thing that are a building block for new proteins, they're actually the active component of the protein. They're the part of the protein that stimulates muscle protein synthesis and whole body protein synthesis. For example, when I try to explain protein to people as something different than carbohydrates

and fat, I like to use this metaphor of like a house. If you want to run your house and everything in your house, your dishwasher, your lights, your TV, et cetera, you need to get energy from outside. So you get it from the grid or solar panels, or you could use natural gas, or if you power one out, you can run a generator. But you got to get energy in. That's carbohydrates and fat. That's their primary focus, right?

I mean, there's other roles of fat, but that's the primary focus. Protein is fundamentally different. Protein is your house. Protein is what is used to rebuild your house. So for example, in the same way that you know if I have carpet in my front entryway and I walk over it over and over and over again, it starts to wear out. Similarly, our bodies do the same thing. So while carbohydrates and fat are the fuel that we consume, the thing gets converted into ATP and allows us to like move through space, protein actually replaces the proteins in our body. All of our vital organs, our muscle, our skin, our hair, our nails, but even things like enzymes and hormones are all proteins.

And the way that proteins function in nature and in our body is that they don't last forever. Every protein gets old. It degrades and then it breaks apart. And so if I look at my skin and I see this piece of protein, I see there's actually I don't see but I know there's millions of proteins in my skin. Each individual one reaches an end of how long it's functional. It breaks down and when it breaks down, it breaks apart into the little amino acids. Some of them are no longer useful and I pee them out.

The ones that can be reused stay in circulation in my blood and they can be used to build a new protein. That's why I eat protein. When I consume a chicken breast, I digest the protein, the amino acids get released into my blood and then they go and they work with those other previous amino acids to rebuild tissue, to rebuild muscles, to rebuild enzymes. So you have to eat protein in order to literally rebuild your body. But protein is not only the building blocks, it's not only the carpet, it's not only the

hardwood floors. The essential amino acids are the actual workers that come in and rip up the old carpet and install the new carpet. They play a very distinct primary role that is completely different than non-essential amino acids and so I think oftentimes in the debate around trying to understand what protein is or complete protein is, it gets lost that this very important role of essential amino acids as distinct from the fact that they're essential. Is it safe to say that we have decent storage mechanisms

for carbohydrates in the form of glycogen fat, in the form of body fat? But proteins, we don't really store very well, right? Like we store them in terms of tissue, but to break it down to use because we need, not a very great process. Would you say that's safe? I would say that the, well, yes, glycogen stores

would be like the short-term storage of carbs. Fat, like body fat, is the long-term store of energy. Energy. Fuel. The long-term storage reservoir of amino acids, or protein, but fundamentally amino acids, is muscle. That is why it's so fundamentally important to build and maintain lean muscle as we age because when you get older, or really any time in life, but if you undergo some type

of chronic illness or injury, or as you get older and you have a harder time maintaining that lean muscle, you have other needs for amino acids. For example, my heart tissue, it's gonna start to, it goes through some form of protein turnover. The proteins in my heart break down, they have to be rebuilt. I can't just like not rebuild them.

I have to rebuild that heart tissue. So where do I get the amino acids from to do it? My muscle. Your muscle is the reservoir. So rather than saying like you don't have good storage, we actually do have pretty good storage, it's muscle. But that is the only storage that you have. And so you have to keep replenishing and rebuilding it, otherwise you're screwed. You have to keep building and replenishing it and

that is why the outcomes of older people with less muscle are so much worse than those with more muscle. That's right, because I remember learning this a long time ago. I remember I was taking a course on nutrition and the instructor talked about how when you lose muscle because you change your form of exercise and you diet you're going to calorie deficit and do lots of cardio let's say and you start to lose muscle. It's part of an adaptation process and I remember them saying your body doesn't want to burn muscle for energy that's not what's happening it's paring it down and it was like a light bulb for me like oh the the burning of muscle to get protein

isn't necessarily a great option. Your body doesn't want to do that. Body wants to keep its muscle. It'll pair it down as a form of adaptation, but it's not pairing it down because it needs the proteins. If that happens, then you're in real trouble. If your body's losing muscle

because you're not getting a protein, you're in big trouble. Is that safe? Would you say that's safe to say? That is safe to say when you're talking about the protein already in your muscle. Right, yes. If you go into a caloric deficit,

a couple things are happening. The protein that you used to eat to just rebuild the proteins in your body, like you eat the exact same amount of chicken as you used to eat. Right. Or you eat somewhere between 0.7 grams and 1.2 grams of protein per pound of your own body

weight per day. Typically in the past, you would actually use that just to rebuild. Your proteins rebuild your muscle. But if you reduce the amount of calories you get per day, suddenly your body does think that that external source of protein, it's like, I'm not going to prioritize this to rebuild muscle, and it converts more of that dietary food protein that you're eating into sugars. It does do that.

That said, in your own body, no, you're not burning, the way that you're actually living off the fat, the fat in your body is being burned to fuel the energy, you're not burning the muscle to then be converted into a fuel source. What's happening is that you have to have enough amino acids to help rebuild your enzymes, your hormones, your vital organs, all these things. And so it's breaking down the muscle tissue to supply amino acids to the rest of the body

for all these other things to function. So it's not for energy, it's for like, maybe you got like a hole in your roof and so you remove the floorboards from your living room and go put it- Not to turn the lights on, but to patch it. To patch the hole. Got it. Now is this why we see that when we train clients and this is, you know, bodybuilders talk about this all the time, why high protein intake becomes more important as your calories

drop? It becomes way more important. Okay. Yeah, it becomes way more important as your calories drop? It becomes way more important. Okay. Yeah, it becomes way more important. So I think typically overall when we talk about how much protein someone should eat in a day, there's a lot of variables. And I think, I mean I've heard you guys say it

and I think it's a wise advice just to say about a gram of protein per pound of body weight. It's a good piece of advice that covers a lot of different situations, but ultimately there are many factors at play. How old you are, how active you are, if you're trying to lose fat and maintain muscle, if you have some type of illness or injury, etc. And so what I would say is if you're in a situation in which you're kind of in like

maintenance mode, you probably can do a little less. You're in maintenance mode and you're not like a huge jack dude. You could probably do a little less than a gram of protein per pound of body weight. That said, as soon as you want to get into trying to lose fat and maintain muscle becomes that much more important. And recent studies from the last few years sponsored actually by the US military because they're trying to understand how to deal with soldiers in the field that are going through caloric restriction because it's-

And stress. Yeah, stress and all this stuff. It was shown that in order to maintain a net protein balance, meaning like you don't burn that muscle, you don't convert, you don't break- Positive protein synthesis. Yes, positive protein synthesis. So you don't break down muscle,

you don't break down more muscle to supply the rest of your organs etc. with amino acids and so that you end this phase with actually more equal to or more muscle that it was required to increase the essential amino acid intake by three times on a 30% caloric deficit. So they took these, and the subjects were young males, so this is not even like a- Old person. This is not like old people where it's going to be more important. But for these young males, they had to increase the dosage of the essential amino acids threefold

to have a net protein balance. So it becomes way more important. I would say that someone who's in an aggressive caloric restriction should be thinking way above actually a gram of protein per pound of protein. Does that change based off, because you said amino acids, what if they had like whole protein from whole foods that make a difference or is it the same, would it be the same amount? So, and this is me just trying to be nuanced, the study I'm talking about is specifically measuring,

it's actually keeping people on 0.7 grams of protein per bound of body weight daily diet and they're only reducing carbohydrates and fat and then they're using essential amino acids as a clinical intervention to try to help them maintain their lean muscle. You potentially could also do it with something like a protein powder or whole food protein. You would need more because essential amino acids, even in a whey protein powder, which is like the most ideal protein type supplement you could take, only 45% of it is essential

amino acids. So you need to be taking at least twice that amount of whey protein. But I think what's more interesting, and this is an interesting introduction into like, it's not just the essential amino acid content, it's actually how digestible the essential amino acid is. Bioavailability is what we're talking about?

The bioavailability is what we're talking about. And this is, you know, it's a typical kind of debate between plant-based eaters and animal animal protein eaters, but let's actually just exclude the plant-based folks for a second because it's really stimulating and interesting even if you only look at animal-based proteins. And this is everything I'm talking about is covered in the International Society of Sport Nutrition position paper that came out last year or related articles to that people like Dr. Arne Ferrando, Dr. David Church, Dr. Robert Wolfe. These guys are like the leading researchers and it's all really widely published available information. But what leads to muscle protein synthesis? So muscle protein, and I'm sure you guys have talked about this before on the show, but just to make sure

everyone's on like listeners are on the same page. Muscle protein synthesis. So muscle protein, and I'm sure you guys have talked about this before on the show, but just to make sure everyone's like listeners are on the same page, muscle protein synthesis just means that your body makes new proteins at the site of the muscle. Like it builds muscle. That said, it doesn't necessarily mean hypertrophy. It doesn't necessarily mean building more muscle. It could also be like muscle protein turnover, replacing older muscle fibers with newer ones.

So positive protein synthesis would be more than you're breaking down, negative would be less than you're breaking down, and then maintaining would be the same. Yes. Okay. But if you're increasing the amount of protein synthesis, it could just be turnover, it could just be replacing old ones with new ones.

Got it. Or it could be actually making more total muscle tissue. So what leads to muscle protein synthesis, obviously resistance training supports muscle protein synthesis. Stimulates it, yeah. But this is maybe the point going back to Adam's question earlier. It's like, what did I not know or what blew my mind? The food itself stimulates muscle protein synthesis, which I think a lot of people don't

get. They think, no, the stimulus is the weight training and the food is just like the support. Yeah, some food is more anabolic than others. It is, yeah. And so here's what's interesting. What has been uncovered in the last 10 years is that the peak concentration of essential amino acids from whole food or from a protein powder,

from a supplement in the blood is the indicator of how much additional muscle protein synthesis will be generated. So it's a strong connection or is it correlation? Direct correlation. Direct correlation, they have an exact formula. You can look at the formulas and they do this through. And so you can rate this source of protein

because it causes this much of an essential amino acid jump in the blood is more anabolic than this one which causes a lower one, even though the ground's approaching the same or whatever. Interesting. Yes, exactly, exactly. So here's what's fascinating, and I wanna- You know what I'm gonna ask you,

I wanna know which one's the most anabolic. Yeah, I know. We're gonna get into it, we're gonna get into it, yeah. Well, here's one thing I wanna point out, though. I think this whole conversation, I think one thing that I like about you guys, and that I think has been a reason why you've typically been more supplement skeptic, right, is like, hey, how

do you give people like meaningful information and like things they can adhere to and follow and find real change? And when you make things too complicated or you make it to where like people have to do this and then do that and then they have to take this product, it's like, man, it's like people like, is it helping people? You know, or can you just, does it really matter? Or can you just like make it simpler? So someone will actually do the training and eat the protein versus like,

I think they have to combine this pill with that pill. So I just want to, I want to say like, I respect you guys for that. And I would name, I would advise everyone for getting this conversation, like eat whole food meals, eat whole food, mixed meals, because they're good. That's what I like to do. I like to eat steak and potatoes and broccoli because it's delicious and I like to eat it with my family and it's good for me. It's real life. It's real life. It's awesome and it's got good stuff in it. So having said that, 70 grams of beef protein as part of a mixed meal stimulates a little less muscle protein synthesis than

30 grams of beef protein when eaten on its own. And neither is actually that much. They actually don't stimulate that much. Whole food protein doesn't really stimulate that much muscle protein synthesis above baseline. That's not saying it's not good. It's like do some weight training, eat a whole food meal. That's a good decision. But just scientifically. There's a bit of caveats here too, right?

Because the whole food meal is gonna give you more calories. That plays a role. You could have great synthesis, but your calories are too low and nothing's gonna happen. So there's a lot of caveats here, right? But that's a very interesting thing to identify. So. You maximize synthesis when you just interesting thing to identify. So you maximize synthesis when you just eat it by itself.

When you eat it by itself. And the reason why is because the digestion of the beef protein on its own is more easily accomplished without the interference of the other foods. Got it. I swear we learned opposite of that. I thought we always learned that pairing it with a carbohydrate you would maximize those benefits. It's actually Yeah, so there there has been a lot of research specific what you're saying. Yeah, if you if you take a Carbohydrate it has an insulin spike that then supports But when you're talking about these whole foods like this it's simply not the case and there's actually pretty interesting

We can get into maybe later but a NASA study from 2004, where they did these bed rest studies with essential amino acids and carbohydrates for that same reason, but then they later realized they didn't even need the carbohydrates, that the essential amino acids on their own created the spike.

Interesting. So, I mean, all this to say too, like for you guys and for listeners, there's a lot going on in the body and there's a lot of different dimensions to nutrition, but when measured purely in terms of muscle protein synthesis, you get a slightly bigger, a slightly, I mean, it's basically equal for 30 grams of beef protein versus 70 if eaten on its own because you break down the beef, you digest the beef more easily and the EAAs

that are within the beef hit the bloodstream more quickly and have this kind of peak concentration whereas if it's mixed with the other food. I'm glad, I really like the way you preface this though because if I were listening and I, like if I was 18 year old Sal and I'm listening to this, immediately I'm like cool I'm blending my meat. It's faster. It's faster. It's staking my brain.

Yeah and Angelo said I'm going to get a higher essential amino acid and so and then I would ignore all the benefits of digesting your food and chewing on it and the enzymes and all the other stuff that you get from it. So I'm glad you prefaced it the way you did, but this still is very fascinating. So this has to do with the digestion? Is that what they're saying? This has to do with the digestion. Basically, the ability of the essential amino acids to reach the blood more quickly.

And he hit this peak concentration. So now here's, this is where it gets really interesting. Whey protein powder, on a gram for gram basis, has about three times the peak concentration as beef. Yeah. So why is that? So the whey protein powder is, it has, you know, maybe slightly better EAA

kind of proportions, like the proportions of the EAs to each other, and it's slightly higher than the beef. It's like a little over 45%. It's one of the fastest-supporting proteins. Yeah. But that's basically what it is. It's so easy for the body to digest that the EAAs hit the blood way more quickly. So this, though, I think becomes kind of a practical point then. It's like, okay, well, if I'm trying to supplement my diet, right? And I eat three meals a day, but on top of that, I'm trying to sneak in like a little bit more protein because it's hard for me to hit that one gram of protein per pound of body weight. The whey protein shake that you make is more efficient and more effective than just trying

to eat another 20 grams of beef. It's three times, I mean in terms of the plasma EAA levels, it's three times the impact. I'm going to back you up on this because unless you're like me and a lot of people who can't digest dairy very well, right, so dairy doesn't work for me so the digestive benefits don't work for me, but if you digest dairy well, whey is even recommended for people with gut issues because of its ease of digestibility so long as you don't have intolerance issues. They actually recommend it to people with Crohn's disease and people with other type

of digestive issues. I've seen that for a while. What's the most anabolic whole source of protein they're finding? You knew that was coming. What I would say is if you're talking about whole food on its own, you're basically looking at what has the highest proportion of EAAs and it is, I mean, it's egg. It's dairy actually.

Like if you take dairy on its own, dairy has the highest D-I-A-S score. What's the dairy? I have advice we've been given since day one. Just having a tall glass of whole milk, you know? Man, the milk, really, I mean, that's what I give to my kids. My kids drink a lot of whole milk. I'm all on it.

Yeah, like Parmesan cheese, man. That's a great one. Is this a safe statement to say that a high protein diet is less important in the bulk than it is in a cut? I don't think that that's necessarily true. I mean, what I would say is they're important, but for different reasons. Okay, explain. So I just want to say that I want to get back to the previous conversation, I don't think that's necessarily true. I mean, what I would say is they're important, but for different reasons. Okay, explain.

Right? So I just want to say that I want to get back to the previous conversation because it's what introduces the supplements, something like BCAAs or EAAs and what role they play. But let's go here first. So for a bulk, you're trying to add mass. You're trying to actually build new proteins at the level of the muscle. So you need to eat a lot of food what I would say is more the issues you probably need to eat other additional calories That's what I'm saying in addition to the protein

whereas When you're trying to cut the the fat and maintain the lean mass because more important well then then you Yeah, I guess you're I guess it's true It is more important like if I'm gonna tell someone to eat one and a half grams of protein per pound of body weight, it'll be the cut, not the cut. I would do it during the cut, yeah. Okay, that's what I'm trying to say.

Yes, I would do it during the cut. So if you're- The other person, as long as they're in a surplus of calories, it could come from carbohydrates or fats, and as long as they're hitting their protein intake, they're essentially fine. Yes, but if you're- And they're at a gram,

they're at like a gram of protein per pound weight. That's what I mean, both high protein, but like excessively high, probably more important for the cut. Yes. Is based on what you're saying. That's what I mean. Both high protein, but excessively high, probably more important for the cut. Yes. Is based on what you're saying. The other thing I would just say, probably in a more broader health perspective too,

it's more important to retain muscle than to build it. Like if I had to choose, right? I would also say like- Oh yeah, losing muscle. Yeah, like losing muscle is a way bigger issue. And I think, and I don't know who all the listeners of the show are, but like so many people go on different types of diets and are looking at the scale

and trying to lose weight, not realizing, you know, the muscle loss that's occurring. And I would just say like the protection of your muscle. Oh, it's huge. As the, like most, I think probably the most important savings account for your health, for your full life, like protect that. And so yes, I would, if I had to choose, I would say more protein

during the cut is more important. And it is certainly gonna become a way higher proportion of your calories. It's gotta be a way higher proportion of your calories. By the way, this is old school bodybuilding. That's exactly what I'm talking about. This is not like, yeah. I mean, it's funny because they explained it wrong,

but they knew something because they found that their athletes did better when their protein intake was really high in their crazy cuts. When their calories were high, they weren't so... They had high protein still, their bodybuilders, but it wasn't nearly as important. That's why I asked you that question. How much does the intensity of training dictate this also? When you're in a cut, you're low calorie, and does the protein intake or the essential amino acids become even more important if like,

let's say you're a long distance runner, or you train really hard and aggressive for an hour or two, does that factor in or play a role in this? Yeah, and for two really important reasons. One is on the energy level. So if you are in a caloric deficit, or you're not even in a caloric deficit, you're like, this is the amount of calories you would normally eat in a day.

But on this day, you exercise way more than that. Well, then now you're in a caloric deficit, because you didn't eat the additional calories you needed to consume to hit those needs to maintain the balance. And so immediately what happens is, again, your body is going to utilize more of the protein in your diet to be converted into a sugar because it's not prioritizing the maintenance of the muscle because it's hungry. It's basically it's like it's hungry. It needs it's the primary role the protein is ultimately to help you rebuild the proteins in your body but if you're starving yourself it's gonna use the protein instead it's gonna more of it into energy. That seems to explain the

paring down process of muscle in another way too. It's going to convert more of it into energy. That seems to explain the paring down process of muscle in another way too. It's like, listen, part of the reason why your body's paring down the muscle is you think you're hitting your, what you need in grams of protein. But now because of your high calorie burn and low calorie, your body's now prioritizing that as like, Hey, we need to use some of this as fuel because, and therefore it doesn't go into maintaining or holding your muscle mass on.

So that makes a lot of sense. Now, Angela, a little pushback, okay? Why wouldn't then supplementing with carbohydrates be protein sparing in that case? So it's using the extra protein for energy. They could be. Why not just supplement, okay. They could be, well, I think in that example of the endurance situation, I think that's a great point.

That was an excellent pushback. So now I think the, so as in the specific context of like, hey, this is my general amount of calories, but I'm going and I'm doing this, all this additional exercise. What if I just consumed a bunch more carbohydrates during that period? Which a lot of endurance athletes do. That said, when you perform any type of exercise, and endurance exercise actually does it perhaps more in some ways than resistance exercise, you oxidize an increased

amount of amino acids than you typically would. And the reason for that is because amino acids, particularly leucine actually, plays a role at the level of the mitochondria to actually facilitate the energy production. So it's not like, it's not the energy source, but it's facilitating it. It's like facilitating the conversion basically of the glucose into the ATP. So you oxidize considerably more. On top of that, as you're oxidizing it, right? This is like where the central fatigue hypothesis comes from. I'm not sure if you guys in your audience is as familiar with that. It's more like an endurance thing. But when you go for a long time with endurance exercise, you can start to bonk, like lose energy. But it's not just from the carbohydrates.

The hypothesis is actually that because you have been oxidizing so much more leucine to facilitate this energy production and to support this overall like muscle breakdown turnover that's happening from the exercise itself, that the levels of your leucine and your blood go down. And that since our brain has a blood-brain barrier and the leucine and the tryptophan operate on the same pathways that the amount of tryptophan that gets into the brain becomes increased. The tryptophan is the precursor of serotonin which is a softer more like sleepy type thing.

Actually serotonin becomes 5-HTP which becomes melatonin. That whole process itself, there's this whole other oxidation of the amino acids themselves that are occurring. It can make sense for endurance athletes to supplement with additional protein or free form essential amino acids during extended endurance activities or before or after in order to better support literally just the muscle Well, if it's if it's after it's supporting the muscle recovery if it's during it's to prevent as much of the actual provoked muscle Breakdown what now? Why would we tell someone then we're talking about essential amino acids and essential amino acids if you look at a good source of you know

Complete protein you're going to have your non-essential and essentials, got all of them. Essential amino acids on their own, you can also supplement with, right? You could buy an essential amino acid supplement that doesn't have all the non-essentials. It just has the essential ones, which include the branch amino acids, right? Leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Why supplement with the essential amino acids over just taking protein? Why wouldn't I just do a scoop of protein instead of doing a scoop of essential amino

acids? So, I'll answer it technically and then we can get into like, well, what use cases actually make sense, right? Right. So, technically, going back to the story or the data that we discussed earlier, which were the 70 grams of the beef protein actually stimulates as much muscle protein synthesis as 30 grams if it'd eaten on its own. And gram for gram, the whey protein's three times

the impact of that beef because it's so much more digestible and the EAAs, the essential amino acids in the protein, get to the blood so much more quickly. When you take an essential amino acid supplement, assuming it has all nine EAAs, and ideally it's leucine enriched so it's a higher proportion of the total composition is leucine and the BCAAs and lysine, it has

three times the impact as the whey protein powder. Interesting. In young healthy adults. The reason for that is there's two obvious reasons for it. One is what we know is that essential amino acids stimulate all of the muscle protein synthesis. We've done studies, the scientific community has done studies where they do beef protein proportions of essential amino acids like as a supplement.

They add in non-essential and they do non-essential on their own and it's very clear that the non-essential provide no increase in muscle protein synthesis. Going back to Adam's original question, what kind of blew my mind or what have I learned? Essential amino acids are the active component of the protein. They're the thing that tell your body to stimulate protein synthesis.

So in this case, with whey protein, only 45% of it is essential amino acids. So 55% is non-essential. That doesn't mean those aren't good things. It doesn't mean that, and there's not other good minerals in the whey protein. But on a gram for gram basis, in terms of stimulating muscle protein synthesis, it has half the amount, less than half the amount of the active component. On top of that, that active component in the whey protein still has to be digested to some

degree. The free form essential amino acids just, they're immediately digested. They immediately go into the blood. And that's why they have such greater impact. So if you're, you know, I'd rather I'd say is like, there are two different tools that achieve the same end. If you're trying to, and maybe I would just say this too, like if you're in your 20s, right, and you're pretty fit and you're in maintenance mode, I think that a lot of these

supplement things we're discussing have less importance because developing really healthy eating habits and exercising and all that is really important. That said, if you're in your 20s and you want to have that much better performance, like in the gym or in a sport or something, supplements start to make more sense. And then it's like, well, why would I take whey versus EAAs? Well, EAAs are way easier to take and to drink. You get like three times the impact in like a fruit flavored beverage

or taking a few capsules versus having to drink like a whole shake and feel kind of full. That said, if you more want to feel that much more full, well then a whey protein could make more sense. That is in young people. As soon as you start to get into a situation with anyone who is more anabolically resistant, which would be people trying to lose weight,

people that are aging, basically at age 30 and every decade after that gets- Pre-diabetes, diabetes. Yeah, all these things, it becomes different. So that example I gave you of the EAAs versus the whey protein, that's for young people. For old people, it's been shown, women in their 60s, that three grams of EAAs stimulate

as much muscle protein synthesis as 20 grams of whey protein. So it's over six times the impact. So like, us sitting around, I don't know what age you guys are, but I'm 40, we're around the same age, it's like, we probably are somewhere in the middle. We're probably like, it's probably about four times the impact. So like for someone younger, EAAs have about three times the impact.

At 40, it's about four. And by the time, you know, we're in our 60s, it's gonna be potentially six times the impact. Well, as we get older, it starts to make more sense. So what I would say is, the younger and healthier and more maintenance mode you are, the less important this whole discussion is, right? And the more maintenance mode you are, the less important this whole discussion is, right? And the more that you are older, above 30, right? I'm

starting to pay attention, listen more, above 40 even more, 50, 60, 70. Or you're in a situation where you're trying to lose fat and maintain muscle and you need so much more essential amino acids, ultimately to just stimulate enough muscle protein synthesis, it could be way more efficient to complement or supplement already a high protein diet with something like essential amino acids than trying to do away protein. But I would also say you can do both. They're both good solutions.

So I'll sell what you're selling for you and then I'll push back a little bit and just ask a question. So to sell what you're selling for you, and then I'll push back a little bit, and just ask a question. So to sell what you're, and back me up if or not, I don't know if I'm right or wrong here, but if I'm hitting my caloric targets, let's say I'm trying to cut, or I just don't want to eat more, I don't want to bump my calories anymore,

but I want the benefits of extra muscle protein synthesis. Supplementing with essential amino acids doesn't increase my calories or does it increase my calories less than taking in protein? In other words, would I benefit from essential amino acids in the sense that I'm not getting the calories? So it's like, oh, I already have my calorie targets, but I want to get more essential amino acids. Let me do this three grams of essential amino acids instead of a 40 gram shake which is going to give me another 100, whatever, 160 calories. Is that safe to say?

Okay, so taking a step back, the way that calories are understood within food and within supplements follows a few different rules. And the actual amount of calories in a gram of protein or a gram of carbohydrates or a gram of fat typically are like 4-4-9, right? But it's not always exactly that. And it can kind of differ on different types of food, et cetera. And the way that the food industry and supplement industry has regulated things is that you basically describe the content of a food when you say what's in it by using that rule, like

the 4-4-9 rule. And because amino acids do not fall into that category, they're not technically a complete protein, they're not technically a protein, not even a complete protein because you could list protein on your supplement facts panel, your nutrition facts panel like collagen. You could say protein, but it's not a complete protein. And it's very deficient in stimulating muscle protein synthesis, but it could say it's a protein whereas with an amino acid supplement, you can't say it's a protein because it's not a complete protein, and it's very deficient in stimulating muscle protein synthesis But it could say it's a protein whereas with an amino acid supplement You can't say it's a protein because it's technically not Therefore when you measure the grams of protein that are in it there's none

So it doesn't follow this 4-4-9 rule, but it still has calories. That said though if you were to actually do measurement of unique amino acids, they're going to have some amount of caloric impact Well what I said still stays though because three grams of essential amino acids are they're going to have some amount of caloric impact. Well, what I said still stays though, still because three grams of essential amino acids are gonna give you the same essential amino acid rise in your blood than 20 grams of complete protein. It's still less calories.

It's significantly less calories. Yeah, and significantly less overall impact, yes. Okay, so if I had- And what I would say is the more muscle protein synthesis you spike, the greater the diet-induced thermogenesis, the greater the impact to your total metabolism, right? It's gonna be better. It's gonna be, so my point is the more muscle protein synthesis you spike, the greater the diet-induced thermogenesis, the greater the impact to your total metabolism, right? It's going to be better. So my point is the same, right?

Okay, you're hitting your calories, we want to get a little benefit of extra essential amino acids. Three grams of essential amino acids is going to be like 20 grams a shake or six grams are going to be like a 40-gram shake, still less calories. Let's go with that. So we have the less calories, but we still get some of the anabolic effects that we're looking for. Yes. let's go with that so we have the less calories but we still get some of the anabolic effects that we're looking for. Yes, and often times for people who are having

a hard time eating enough, what's curious is that many people actually like to use essential amino acid supplements to help curb their appetite because it does have an effect of regulating your overall amino acid balance. So it's like, to some effect and kind of boosting energy and mood, et cetera. And so some people use it for that.

But in more clinical populations, like older people or people in really aggressive weight loss or people who are using maybe a drug induced weight loss type situation. Like a GOP one. Yeah, where they're having a really hard time just like eating enough. It's much easier to consume that extra amount

and have it not affect the rest of the habit. 100%. I mean, sharing with the audience, that's how this conversation will happen. Yeah, that's how this will happen. I mean, Angelo and I have been talking for quite some time now, and I had told him that,

listen, we are about to take this test group through GLP-1s, and if ever I saw a definite situation where I would highly recommend branched-chain amino acids, or essential amino acids. This is the case right here, because what I've learned personally going through it and then watching other people, they struggle to hit 1,000 calories.

And in that situation, I mean, you can't tell them to have five shakes in a day. They just, they wouldn't even build a stomach and get it down. Protein is too, so it's really, really difficult. Yeah, one shake, you know, to use your example, three grams of essential amino acids is much more like water than 20 gram protein shake.

So it's just a lot easier to get down when you can't eat more. And so now it becomes a very valuable, in my opinion, very valuable supplement in those populations. But, so one more aspect to, or question that I have, if we go back to some of the studies you brought up, one thing that sometimes is misleading is you look at a study that says, if you do cardio on an empty stomach,

you'll see more fat oxidation. Or ketogenic diet increases fat oxidation 300% over a traditional diet. But at the end of the day, who cares? How much body fat did you lose versus not? Because fat oxidation doesn't necessarily mean you lost body fat right if you're in a ketogenic state your fat oxidation is gonna go through but if you're in a calorie surplus you're not gonna lose any body fat. When they're doing these

studies on essential amino acid concentrations on muscle protein synthesis are they controlling it in other words are we looking at two groups same calories exercise everything's the same, except this one has more essential amino acids in their blood, and are we seeing that turning to more muscle or less muscle loss or better performance, or is it just a measure of muscle protein synthesis,

essential amino acid concentrations? That's a great question, I really heard two questions in it. One is like, hey, how solid are these studies? Are these controls really being put in place? And the second thing I actually heard you allude to is what about the human outcomes? Totally. Like you can blah blah blah me all day about these mechanistic things. What a muscle protein synthesis is. Did you get more muscle? Did people get more muscle? Like what happened in the end? Right? And so I'll answer both of them. So first of all, what I'd say is, when we're talking about essential amino acid studies

and protein studies, oftentimes they're combined. Like this whole research area is largely driven by universities that have like longevity departments. It's like geriatric departments. There's also lots of studies, and the same people end up doing studies though for like the military or for NASA or NIH and for sports. But like within academia, that's where a lot of the funding is.

And there's a lot of these studies. So this is not like, there's a lot of these studies and they tend to be crossovers between protein, whey protein and EAA freeform crystalline studies. So it's not like, oh, there's like 20 studies I'm talking about. There's hundreds of studies I'm talking about. There's hundreds of studies on humans. And these studies go everywhere from basically actually measuring what they call fractional synthetic rate, which is more the mechanistic stuff where they're actually measuring, hey, what's the, they put like a tracer, a color basically

on these amino acids. They measure like, hey, how much of that gets from, you know, actual digestion into the muscle or they measure like different hey, how much of that gets from actual digestion into the muscle, or they measure different amounts of the actual increase of the muscle itself. That said, it's acute. It's like in this very short timeframe. Then again, the question of what happens longer term? There's lots of human outcome studies where it's like you put a group of these of these women on basically seven and a half grams of EAAs twice a day for three months versus the control group they put on several more pounds of muscle. Okay.

Both doing resistance training twice a week, everything controlled for. So I'd say is the protein intake high in the other group though? In other words is it better than a high protein intake or is there a benefit if I'm eating one gram of protein per pound of body weight, am I gonna benefit from supplementing with essential amino acids? That's a great question, and what I would say is it depends on who you are.

Okay. Right, it depends on who you are. So what I would say is, if you are in your 20s, and you go to the gym a few times a week, and you on a maintenance calorie kind of diet, and you eat about a gram of protein per pound of body weight, going back to what I said earlier, I think something like essential amino acids or even the benefit of whey protein over whole food protein, because whey protein

is not whole food protein, it's also a supplement. But like choosing a protein powder or an EA supplement, which is even more effective than that, the benefit of it is just it's less for you. It's less important. That said, if you are 45 years old, right, and you're eating a gram of protein per pound of body weight and you're training a couple times per week, there's probably some benefit. There's probably some benefit of adding essential amino acids in once a day because the gram of protein per pound of body weight is simply not the same

thing for you as it was for you when you were 25. You're not the same. It's a very different situation and that's because your ability to digest that gram of protein becomes reduced and your sensitivity to the amino acids in the protein to stimulate muscle protein synthesis goes down. So that's one of the biggest issues with aging populations. They need more protein, period. Well, is that like the sensitivity,

like and it's also true for resistance training too. And this is not to discourage people, like you should resistance train maybe even more and even eat even more protein. But as you age, the benefits you get, they do decrease. Sure. You simply do not stimulate as much muscle. Well, that's not controversial.

Yeah, yeah, so it's like, and so it's the exact same thing with protein. So a gram of protein per pound of body weight for a 45 year old is not the same as thing for a 25 year old. And then that means, and then for 60 even more. For 60 even more. So I think that's the nuance in this, where it's like, people might be like,

I eat enough protein, so I don't even need that. And it's like, well, how active are you? How old are you? And then going to the point we were at earlier, are you trying to lose weight right now? I mean, I wouldn't advise people to always be trying to lose weight, but if you are in a phase where you're trying to lose fat and maintain muscle,

there's significant advantages to it on top of the gram of protein. But I think your core question, though, too, is like, in all these studies, were they always already eating a gram of protein per pound of body weight? I think in many cases, they were consuming something closer to probably 0.7, 0.8. Some though they're likely consuming a gram.

And that's what I'm saying. It's not like I'm talking about one study. It's like we're talking about a whole area of research. And also Angela, look, we're trainers. We train people for decades, okay? You know, I can hold up on one hand how many people I train that consistently ate a gram of protein per pound of body weight without me having to coach them through it. Nobody does that. The value of protein supplementation or even essential amino acid supplementation just from a real world standpoint.

For a lot of people, benefit. A lot of people will take a scoop of protein. It's just huge benefits, but it's because they just don't need a lot of protein. They simply don't. That's what becomes a big problem. I also, I really like the way you set the table earlier to go back to what you said, especially when you're younger and you're like,

at that point, you're 20 years old, I think there's a lot to be said about creating good habits and behaviors around eating steak and broccoli in whole foods. Instead of skipping right to, hey, let's just default to shakes and pills to try and get it. It's like, you probably should try and build those behaviors as much as possible. Why you're young? Why it doesn't make that much of an impact? And then as you age, you recognize,

okay, this is kind of how I eat. I'm always under. This word becomes more essential or important for you to do that. So I think the way you've set the table on it is really good too, because that's what I would advise still a young kid. I would never tell a kid like automatically default to supplementation for anything. It's like, dude, you got to find a way to learn better behaviors around trying to hit these targets through Whole Foods. But the truth is like Sal's point, very rarely do I ever hit a client that actually could hit that.

Here's a place we didn't touch on that I think, and I would love, if you're well versed on this, which it sounds like you probably are, I would love some commentary on're well versed on this, which it sounds like you probably are, I would love some commentary on, that isn't talked about enough. Many of the studies, and you kind of talked about this, there's longevity departments. A lot of the studies on essential amino acids, protein amino acids in general,

revolve around longevity and or recovery. Some of the first amino acid based studies were done on like burn victims or people who had severe trauma to the body. How important is protein for somebody when they're hurt, damaged, injured, they got burned, sunburned, whatever? Significantly more. And the reason why is going back to the same term of being anabolically resistant. All that means is that your body's in a resistant state

where it doesn't want to maintain or build muscle. It's prioritizing other things at that time. On top of that, as you can imagine, the burn victims is an excellent example. And honestly, the authors of the International Society of Sports Nutrition position paper, they're the guys that did those burn victim studies 20 years ago. So it's all the same

community of these types of researchers who have done this work. What happens in those cases is that the amount of muscle protein breakdown is gigantic. It's huge. It's huge. Like they are just breaking down so many proteins and the increased need to try to replace this this affected tissue is so great. The importance of protein becomes only that much more. So I would say in situations of injury, illness, the importance of protein again becomes amplified. Oh yeah.

Could you throw in that category then too? I know we're talking about extreme things like burning, but wouldn't overtraining and like overly applying intensity in your training cause a similar effect also? Yes, a couple ways. One, I would say it's like, it would depend on like what type of overtraining, but if you're overtraining so much that you're releasing all these additional stress hormones, then yes, the stress hormones are actually going to prevent the amount of muscle protein synthesis. I mean, let's put what real world people do. five days of CrossFit and training for an hour to two hours of intense training

Happens all the time with people time off to recover. Well, if you want to recover faster Get your protein or essential amino acids I mean what's funny is that some of the places now that are that are using essential amino acid supplementation or What could be labeled as anti-catabolic amino acids or metabolites like HMB or whatever, are nursing homes. Places where people, and they're finding longevity improve and people live longer because they're giving them supplements that were designed for athletes and bodybuilders. It's quite interesting. So that's where it's almost like, if you have grandparents and you want to give them something

that might help them, like give them a protein supplement or essentially mass, I mean, ask them something. For real, I mean, that's my sense too. It's like when, because I get emails and texts from like all types of people from friends, you know, went to high school with, like, my son is training in sports now, like what supplement should he take, if any,

all the way to like, you know, what should I do with my mom who is getting injured? And what I would he take, if any, all the way to like, you know, what should I do with my mom who is getting injured? And what I would say is that, again, you know, for like younger people, the focus on supplementation should be this additive thing that could increase your performance that much more. And it is like, if you take essential amino acids before you train, you will get more benefit than if you hadn't. And it will be significantly more than also protein. Similarly, if you take creatine every day, unless you're, you know, one of the rare people that has resistance to it, like you're going to have more

phosphocreatine stores in your cells and you're going to get more output. You're going to get another one or two reps. Like that's what's going to happen. But like, that's why you would do it. Whereas when you get older or you're injured, it's like you're doing it to just like, would do it. Whereas when you get older or you're injured, it's like you're doing it to just like be okay, kind of be okay, right? To not suffer, to not wither, to have good basic health, to be able to overcome, you know, short-term issues. You know, and I'd say maybe going back to this burn victim one, I believe the burn victim story, research studies were actually before the NASA studies, but there were, and I believe that's actually led to them getting the NASA studies there's studies in basically it was in 2004 where you know NASA's trying to

understand hey how can we have people in space retain their muscle right by the way priority it's a big problem they're living on the space station and they come back with osteoporosis yeah I, I mean it's it's there's there's no resistance right and so are there you know drug interventions nutritional interventions and so a study was conducted and I believe it was through the Texas medical branch, but that's the one that's done a ton of studies back in the early 2000s And basically what it is they had young participants. These are people I think they're like 20 at complete bed rest for 28 days so the only thing they were able to do is like to get out of the bed to like poop but otherwise they couldn't leave the bed.

Imagine signing up for this by the way. We're gonna give you 500 bucks to do nothing. Typical 20 year olds are cool, right? To play video games. And then after six or seven days they actually really started to go crazy. Oh, of course. So in the subsequent studies they could get enough results and within seven days, they shortened the studies because it was like people were going crazy.

But they gave them three meals a day. And then they did an intervention of these higher doses of essential amino acids with some carbohydrates because they thought it was important to spike the insulin twice a day. And the experimental group, the group that got the EAA's lost no muscle mass after 28 days of complete bed rest Wait a minute back up back up. No muscle. They lost no muscle mass. They lost no activity with no activity. Wow, that's crazy That's that's insane. Yeah, this is like 2000 miss 2004, but that's a lot I mean, that's like you're taking that's ridiculous taking a high dose of EAA's but but when you think about him at bed rest

Or I'm injured or I can't do something, like that's, and I can't train. Okay, so let's back up again. I'm finding some more places now where this would be valuable. I hurt my knee, I can't work out my legs, I broke my arm, I'm sick, I'm in bed, or whatever. Because we get this question all the time.

How do I bounce back? How do I prevent myself from losing muscle? So what you're saying is one of the most effective things as shown in some of these studies is have some essential amino acids throughout the day while you're not able to move your leg. It'll minimize at the very least the muscle loss that you'll experience. Yes. And studies have shown that literally even at 28 days they lost no muscle. They were taking 16.5 grams twice a day so So that would be like, it's not nothing. How many scoops of your?

That's like three scoops. That's like a little over three scoops twice a day. It's not that much. It's not crazy, you know. That's nothing I wouldn't do. And what, right, I would do it. And just to clarify, it would, which is kind of the maximum dose that's been shown to work.

It's somewhere between 15 and 18 grams beyond that. You don't stimulate really any additional muscle protein synthesis. It's pretty linear. From three grams to four to five to six, all the way up to 15 to 18, it's like you get that much more benefit. So already, if you took 10 grams,

it is that much better than only taking three grams. But three grams is the minimum. Now, all right, best time to take essential amino acid supplement. Does it matter if you take it with a meal or is it better in between meals before bed when you wake up? In the stomach, yeah. So again, I think it depends on what your daily habits are and what works for you.

But I'll give this overall guidance and I think you guys probably agree with it, but push back if you disagree. Sure. Okay, so overall what's most important is protein intake per day. And I would say actually essential amino acid intake per day. So it means like high quality complete proteins with very bioavailable essential amino acids. Like, you get in that gram of protein per pound of body weight per day, like that's the base that you probably want to start with.

And if you need to use essential amino acids to help you get there, that's good, that's fine. But it's like just getting it in per day. Then the idea of timing is important. But again, I think the more in maintenance mode you are or the younger you are, the less important it is. The more you're really trying to optimize, get that extra 15 to 20% of benefit, timing essential amino acid intake every three to four hours does increase the total amount of muscle protein synthesis you will get in a given day.

Now, does prioritizing change too in the context of somebody who's like, I used to play basketball for like two, two and a half hours straight, right? I'm assuming before and after that or during. Before and after that would be ideal. So I think strenuous exercise definitely. But even outside of strenuous exercise, just in general, if you were trying to really optimize your protein intake, you would eat protein or essential amino acids every three to four

hours. So again, you don't have to do that. And I would start with just getting enough every day. So what I would say is in general, it's like if you have a hard time overall getting in enough protein per day, I would not use a supplement to hit the bare minimum bare minimum of the government of the RDA is 0.4 Yeah grams of power 0.4 grams of protein per pound of body weight I think more recent research shows it's closer to 0.6 Yeah, so like don't like you need to eat at least that much real food

But then if you're going above that I would say anytime you can get it in like anytime You can get a scoop of essential amino acids in or anytime You can get a protein powder and that that works for you If you can control it though You would space it out to where you're either eating protein or you're taking a supplement every three to four hours Okay, so that sounds to me like that helps support the old adage of eating six small meals a day, too the old adage of eating six small meals a day too. Yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to embrace that adage for any other purposes outside of muscle protein synthesis.

I'm not trying to push it either, but I mean, it does kind of help support that old bodybuilder adage. There's conflicting evidence around that, but you're quoting research specifically in essential amino acid supplementation. Essential amino acid, what I'm quoting is, here's the background of the science that I'm describing.

When you consume a high enough dose of essential amino acids in a protein, right, it stimulates a bout basically of muscle protein synthesis and it lasts for about three hours. It depends though, it's like the debates between whey protein and casein. Casein, it lasts longer. Whey protein Got it. It depends though. It's like the debates between whey protein and casein. Casein, it lasts longer. Longer, right.

Whey protein, it's a little bit shorter. But let's just say it's about three to four hours. And when you consume that, if then like an hour into it, you eat a little bit more protein, it doesn't do anything. It doesn't extend it, it doesn't make it higher. It's like not really utilized. And so if your real primary goal is like,

hey, I want to maximize the amount of muscle protein synthesis in total that I can stimulate in a given day, then using protein timing to break it up into a few smaller meals that maximize the amount of muscle protein synthesis will increase the total amount a day. But again, what I'm trying to name is like,

it's not the most important thing. And so if you used essential amino acids in that way, and that is why they did it for the NASA studies and the NIH studies and the older women's studies, they have them eat three times a day, eating about 0.7, 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight distributed evenly in those three meals. And then in the in-between periods.

They added the essentials. They added the essential amino acids and they got the most consistent amount of total spikes of protein synthesis throughout the day and that led to the women after a few months having a few more pounds of muscle than the control group. So it's like it's it's I think it's both a mechanistic thing that we understand but there's also like human outcomes that show that that it works. So I would say like if that's what works for you, putting in between meals, that works.

I would also say though, and this is something that, again, I was more resistant to it because I think just my age and my experience and what I thought was important, the idea of consuming essential amino acids with food, I was like, why would you do that? It's the thing in the food. Why would it matter? And it was actually Dr. Ferrando who helped educate me on the fact that, dude, if you look at the spikes of muscle protein synthesis and what the concentrations of the EAAs do, that if you consume this EAA beverage

before your meal, and he's thinking more for like, you know, 50 year olds and 60 year olds, before your hamburger, it is going to now create this spike in muscle protein synthesis that better Utilizes the EAAs and the pro and the other amino acids in the burger itself Okay to be prioritized for building new muscles So you actually get better use of the size it better though you actually utilize the protein The amino acids that are in that protein source better than you would have had you not. So I think consuming it with meals can also make sense.

Typically I would think like lower protein meals, but again if you're in a sense, if you're doing more aggressive caloric restriction or you're over 50, it could start to make a lot more sense. I really feel like Angelo has just vindicated all my bodybuilder bros that have been sipping on pink lemonade BCAAs all fucking day and you guys have been hammering them for years. But it's not BCAAs. Yeah, it's essential amino acids. There's a difference. Yeah, they showed I've read studies like that, that the branch amino acid compared to essential amino acids is a stimulate protein synthesis. You need the other essentials not just the leucine, isoleucine available. So let's

compare those because I do know that's probably a mistake that's made a lot is people just get BCAAs and think that's doing the same thing. But I think a lot of like the more seasoned bodybuilder bros they do the EAA and for this reason. And this has been pretty available information for a long time and And I will, I mean, I had these types of conversations often, I think we go into a little bit more nuance for your audience, because you guys like are more really in this space. So here's the deal.

All this amino acid protein research that has turned into marketed products began like 40 years ago, right? And they're studying protein and you're trying to see like what they, you know, how it can create benefits or not and like bodybuilders are involved in this type of stuff. And the thing that gets discovered is that like, hey, inside of protein, there are these essential amino acids and of those essential amino acids,

three of them are called the branch chain amino acids. It's literally just the way that they're structured. They look like a branch, right? But of them, leucine, isoleucine, and valine seem to be really important. Like the foods that have more of them tend to promote more muscle protein synthesis. Like there's something in this.

And they do a series of studies, and what gets uncovered is like, yeah, BCAAs. If you just take the BCAAs, they will stimulate muscle protein synthesis. You don't need the other six. So you definitely don't even need the other 11 non-essential. And you know, a whole business takes off. And so people start making BCAA supplements. And what we uncovered over time, and this became more and more clear in the 2000s, but then very clear in the teens, and is completely basically refuted by 2017.

The International Society of Sports Nutrition put out a paper and basically said BCAAs, it's called BCAAs, myth or reality. And it's very clear that it says that they are not anabolic on their own. And this is why, going back to this broader discussion we've been having about EAA concentration, you need a high concentration of all of the EAAs, all nine in the blood. And ideally, you actually would have higher proportion of the leucine and the isoleucine in the valine and also lysine. So in addition to the branch chain amino acids, there's this like fourth buddy, lysine,

who's actually really important because he's slower to get into the muscle tissue. Lysine's non-essential. No, it's essential. It's essential, okay. It's essential, but it's also a limiting factor for protein synthesis. Oh, I see, I see. And so you really need, you need all four of them,

but you also need, you need all nine of the essential amino acids. And what studies have shown, and this is on a more mechanistic basis, but they also have human outcome studies, that when someone takes the BCAAs, you get this gigantic spike in muscle protein synthesis and then a crash. And what happens with that crash is that the net impact is nothing.

Because of the crash. Because of the crash. There's literally, it's not anabolic. So BCAAs, if taken on their own for the purpose of anabolism, do not work. Point blank, that's what the study will show. The nuance I would add is if you were to take BCAAs and you were to add them to a whey protein powder and take them at the same time, you would improve the benefits of that whey protein powder because you would have jacked up the leucine and the isosylvaline.

I was just going to say, couldn't you just do it with leucine? No. You couldn't just do it with leucine. Okay, so you need the other two. If you jack up the leucine, it would help, but I believe, and I have to look at the exact numbers on that, but basically the proportions that you would need, if you jacked up the leucine too much,

if the isoleucine and the valine were increased at the same time, it would become a limiting factor. So there's something there. If you're maybe vegan and you eat really honestly low quality plant-based proteins typically, then low quality not meaning it's impossible. So again, I'm not like- You just need a lot more of it to do the same thing. You just need a lot more of it.

That really is. You need a lot more. So you got to get- Protect yourself from getting attacked by all the leucine. Well, no, no, it's just true. No, but I also want to be fair to it. I'm not saying I just think you You should eat a lot more of it. That really is. You need a lot more. So you got to protect yourself from getting attacked by all the vegan meat. Well, no, no, it's just true. But I also want to be fair to it. Like I'm not, I'm not saying, I just think you have to, you have to eat a lot more food and you also have to be observant of the fact that like that food is then wrapped in other calories.

It's wrapped in carbohydrates. Yeah, of course. So you got to move a lot more. 40 grams of protein from the whole vegan source looks a lot different. It's a lot more food. It's a lot more whatever. Yeah. That's just a fact.

Yeah. So if you used a supplement like a BCAAs to potentially optimize it, you could. So maybe there's something there and maybe there's something to BCAAs during workouts to help because it's so high in the leucine to help prevent like the central fatigue hypothesis. But across the board I would just be like, why? Like just go with the central amino acids. Just go with the central amino acids. Like you could, acids. They're both available at these stores. It's so much more effective across the board. You don't have to combine it. And also, even

if you combine the EAAs with whey protein, they've also been shown to make the whey protein more effective. So it's like, I just wouldn't waste my time or money with the BCAs. I think the best, great information by the way, I think the best selling point for me is in communicating the, because calories is a big deal and taking 40 grams of protein means you're going to have 160 extra calories. Taking 6 grams of essential amino acids is far less calories but would produce the same, based off what you were saying, essential amino acid spike in the blood and give you kind of a similar effect so long as you're already hitting your protein

because now we got all the factors controlled. So for me, that's a great selling point. It's like, look, we don't need to bump your calories that much to get this anabolic effect. You can just do it with essential amino acids and it's a little bit of calories. Well listen, we just had a live caller today. That's right.

We just had a live caller today. That would've worked perfectly. Literally, and when we listened to her breakdown of her strength training two times a week, she was doing 10 hours, five sessions, two hour blocks of pickleball and she's at this hard plateau and she inconsistently hits 100 grams or less of protein a day. And so this would be a perfect example. Oh, you don't want to bump your calories much?

Right, right. Yeah, and she's also concerned about eating too much, putting on, and so like, yeah, she's and she's okay where she's at calories. This would a perfect example of someone that you could recommend. So, because I know one of my friends is going to listen to this episode because they're experts on protein, so I know Lane is going to listen to this, Lane Norton, so he would agree with everything you're saying or is he going to tear this apart? I love the idea of Lane listening to this. Well, he does, but I know that. I mean, he's like a protein guy, right? He breaks things down. He's the guy I send shit to.

Whenever there's a study that I'm confused about, I'll send it to Lane. He always breaks it down well for me. I love that idea. I follow Lane. I like Lane's, I like the performative aspects of how Lane goes about it. And he clearly knows his stuff.

What I would say is that everything that I have shared here comes from that International Society of Sports Nutrition paper. That International Society of Sports Nutrition paper has like 22 contributors to it. The lead authors are very well known within the space and there's over, I think there's like 137 references to this, right? So I don't think he's going to come and listen to this and review this and be like, Oh, that's, that's not true. That's not something. I don't think so either. I my question would be like, I don't know, Lane, like, is there an aspect of this that you felt like I, you know, I bent or I misrepresented or I didn't, you know, I think that that's

where it all comes down to, right? It's kind of like, there's a bunch of data, there's a bunch of studies. I think you presented it very well. I'm trying to share it in a fair context and represent everything. I don't think there's anything he's gonna say that's totally not factual.

No, I think you were very fair. Based off of what I know, I'm not an expert like Lane and it's not my my favorite area to study because I learned so many things about fitness But I think what you're saying is quite accurate and I do think that there are some applications where this is very valuable I think one of them is an individuals who can't who are who have a difficulty eating more Essentially no acid drinks are easy. It's just a fact. I could take a 40 gram shake, which is kind of easy, but a six gram shake of essential amino acid is real easy. It's like water. It's like flavored water. And I also see tremendous benefit for someone who wants to control their calories. If they're going to get a similar effect, writing high protein, tremendous benefit.

And advanced age clients that we know struggle with calories and preservation. That becomes almost like the way we would always recommend creatine. I almost feel like now you're 60 years old like hey just add this into your diet you probably need it. Probably I don't know I can't remember the last time we spoke to a 60 year old who's like yeah I'm crushing 150 to 200 grams of protein every day like you just don't hear that. So I just feel like that should be almost a staple supplement, especially for them. Now here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna experiment, okay?

So I'm pretty good about hitting, I wouldn't say I hit my upper limit of protein, but I get around 180 to 210 grams a day. I weigh about 215 or so. I'm gonna experiment, and I'm gonna take essential amino acids on top of my normal meals. I'll do it in between meals. I'm pretty sensitive to supplements. You can ask my partners here. They'll tell you and then I'll give some feedback. Do I notice a difference? Do I notice no difference?

And it's pretty easy to add, tastes good and it's like whatever, no problem. I've never had an issue adding supplements to what I'm doing. So I'll let you know. Sounds great. I love it. I would love to hear that. Absolutely. I would love to hear that. And I think overall like this has been the So I'll let you know. Sounds great. I love it. I would love to hear that. Absolutely. I would love to hear that. And I think overall, this has been the, this is the best approach to take these types of conversations because there's a bunch of academics and scientists studying this stuff and then there's people more from industry that are taking that information, trying to

build products around it. And then there's people like you that are trying to educate and support people. And it's somewhere in the mix of all that, right? It's not like this thing is This perfect pill that's gonna solve everything you know and there are people I would just say that there are people out there that market essential amino acids by Shitting on way yeah, and I'm like that's I'm like dude. What are you doing? I'm like you're crazy man Dude, I'm like, you're crazy, man. That's where you got your sub-percent of your essential amino acids from.

What are you doing? I'm like, have you read? What'd you say? It's actually not extracted from whey. No, but you know what I mean. Yeah. But like, uh. Yeah, because you can get vegan EAAA too.

I mean, a lot of high quality ones are vegan. It's a fermentation process. Right, right, right. So it's not like they're breaking down of the proteins. It's through a fermentation process. Which again, I think is great. They support vegans in that way That's right. It's very safer. Oh my god

If you're a vegan and you don't supplement with essential amino acids, you're dumb I this is the thing I knew that for day I known that for over two decades all my vegan clients that I would give them an essential amino acid supplements It was like I gave him steroids It was like such a big difference in muscle and performance and strength like that and creatine are the staple Supplements for every vegan I ever worked with 100% in muscle and performance and strength. Like that and creatine are the staple supplements for every vegan I ever worked with, 100%. Well, you won me over with your initial,

in the first 20 minutes when you brought up the recommending to the 20-year-old kid, because even if you are to get a little bit more benefits by doing the EAAs, behaviorally speaking, you're better off teaching yourself to eat whole foods and balance. And I just think that's great advice. Even if you might get a better protein since it's spike from doing the EAAs, at some point in your life you probably

need to teach yourself to have balanced meals and teach. And so I think that's healthy good advice and then it makes total sense as we age and then you're in calorie deficits. And then so I thought for considering your bias you actually position it in a very unbiased way. Thanks. Love it. Appreciate it. I'll test it out and let you know what happened. It's been a fun conversation. I appreciate you coming on the show. I know you know how we've communicated EAs and now we communicate them a little differently because their GLP ones are now in the mix and I say oh my god people can't eat enough let alone you know eating more protein or whatever. But I think you made some pretty good cases.

I love it. I mean, God, we've been doing this so long. It's rare that we get someone to kind of shatter a paradigm a bit on something. So I felt that way today, which is cool. Very cool, man. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

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