Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Power of Protein on Longevity – With Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Episode Date: November 1, 2021

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep94/ To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com This episode is all about protein and gaining muscle. Dr. Lyon dives into how we can use protein when breaking a fast to get the proper nutrients. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is a Washington University fellowship-trained physician in Nutritional Science and  Geriatrics and is board certified in Family Medicine and  Osteopathic Manipulation. She completed her undergraduate degree in Human Nutrition, Vitamin, and Mineral Metabolism at the University of Illinois. Dr. Lyon is the founder of the Institute for Muscle Centric-Medicine. She services the leaders, innovators, mavericks, and executives in their prospective field. In addition, Gabrielle works closely with the Special Operations Military and has a private practice that services patients worldwide. Please see our medical disclaimer. 

increase your dietary protein per meal amount. You can understand that high quality protein is essential for the way in which you age. I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders, and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back. and help you believe in yourself again. My name is Dr. Mindy Pels,

and I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. On this episode of the Resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Now, let's dive into what you're about to listen to. So Dr. Lyon is a medical doctor who she calls herself a muscle, she does muscle-centric medicine, which is really cool because what we're learning a lot right now is that muscle is the organ of longevity.

And she'll talk about that in this interview. But what is so profound about this conversation is we really dialed into protein, all different types of protein. So whether you're a vegan or you're carnivore or you're trying to figure out how much protein, this is the conversation for you. I think what's really important as you move into listening to this conversation is to keep an open mind because what is surfacing in science right now, what we are seeing clinically, and you'll see it with what Dr. Lyon talked a lot about how we need more muscle as we age and especially in end of life care. We are seeing that there are certain forms of protein that really serve us and some proteins that are a little bit too weak. are not building the proper muscle profile that we need.

So I really wanted to bring her on because we talk so much in our fasting group about how we use protein in conjunction or to break a fast so that we are getting the right nutrients so that we are not only benefiting from atophagy, but that we are also stimulating something called mTOR, which builds muscle. And we dove into mTOR. we dove into autophagy on this episode. So if you want to know how much protein to eat, if you want to know what type of protein, if you want to know how to combine protein with fasting, if you want to know if you should eat conventional meat, is it worth it to spend more money on grass fed or can you

just do conventional? This is the episode for you. This is like no other podcast interview I've ever done for you guys. Everything you need to know about protein, everything you need to know about building muscle, Dr. Lyon will answer for you. So as always, I hope you enjoy. I hope this information enhances and improves your health. And if you love it, please send it out into the world, leave us a review. I do this so that you guys can be the healthiest version of you possible. Enjoy. Okay, so here's the million dollar question that I want to start with. why do we need protein? I feel like we're hearing so much right now about why protein is so important. Like it's like it's making a comeback for some reason.

Never went away. I mean, let's be frank. Protein really never went away, but it's this black sheep of the macronutrient family. Yes. Right. Well said. Well said. So why is it a black sheep and why do we need it? Well, it's really interesting. Let's first start about why it's the black sheep. We can all agree that excess carbohydrates are bad. Nobody's going to argue that excess carbohydrates, excess sugar. It's bad, right? Right. Yep.

Going to totally screw up your metabolism. Fat, okay, so there's been a lot of controversy around fat, but we can all agree that some fat is good for you. Fat is a great source of calories. There's all kinds of things that we can agree on. It's benefit. Then we come to protein. And protein has a face, which makes it,

It's very emotional for people. Literally, this is the only macronutrient that people become emotional about. So true. And now what you have here is you have science and you have health. And then on the other side of this, you have emotion. And when you mix science and emotion together, conversations become very confusing. Conversations become very difficult to be applicable, right? it becomes very difficult because then there are these biases.

And we all have biases, but these become overarching in the conversation of protein. And you ask me, well, so there's that aspect of it being the black sheep, of it having a face, of it being very emotional. Then you have very big groups that feel very strongly about not eating animal-based sources of protein, which then leads to conversations that will support that, that these groups will try to make. for example, that animals are bad for the environment, which couldn't be further from the truth as it relates to the U.S. that's not where the majority of greenhouse gas comes from, right?

Yes. Yes. Sent or so is from other things like industry and electricity and travel, all the other things. So there's that aspect. And then you said, well, why do we need protein? And I would say we need protein for everything, for turnover, for kidney, liver, brain, all the turnover in our body, you need protein. And we need it from a very obvious component as it relates to skeletal muscle. When you think about muscle as the organ of longevity, which really

determines the trajectory of how we age, muscle protein and muscle, you can't build it without it. Okay. I mean, that's just a few, right? You need it for hormones and neurotransmitters. You need these amino acids for nearly everything in the body. Yeah. Okay. So let's let's start with this idea. Just so we can reframe protein, I don't want to lose the first thing you said, which is eating meat is not bad, is what I heard is not bad for the environment. Explain that. You know, my husband's a huge environmentalist and he always puts this point out there that the vegans think they're doing something right for the environment, but that's not the case. So help bring us up to speed as to why meat's not bad. bad for the environment. First, first of all, I'd like to say that I think everybody's trying to do their best. I think whether you're vegan or whether you're carnivore, we are all in this together. And instead of dividing us, which is I think really, really happened over the last really five years.

I don't know, Mindy, I'm curious as to what your thoughts, but I really think as of late, we're becoming more divided. Oh, terribly. And we are not the enemy of each other. And that is a huge mistake. Yep. When you think about agriculture, this is, and when you think about greenhouse gas, let's take greenhouse gas. It's a very complex system. It is not the cows fart and then, you know, they're emitting greenhouse gas and it's a problem.

It is so much more complex than that. And it is an entire life cycle. And when you look at the EPA data, there's some data. I was just looking at the charts from 2017. And it broke down what the contribution of greenhouse gas is as. it relates to different, quote, products. And when you look at agriculture, agriculture as a whole, and I'm defining that as fruits and vegetables, I'm defining that as cattle, dairy, chicken, everything makes up 9%. The most that it's ever going to contribute to greenhouse gases is 9% maximum. When you break that down, three and a half percent of that would be coming from meat. So let's say you were to do a meatless Monday, then you still have to get your protein from some sources. And those sources would be, you know, vegetables, grains, however else you can make that up.

So the biggest impact that you would ever have from doing a meatless money, meatless, meatless money, that would be interesting. Monday would be maybe 0.1 percent, nothing. Not much. Right. But the reason that they target. meat and these groups target meat is because they believe morally that we shouldn't be eating animal products. So whatever needs to happen to push a narrative. And these narratives actually take us

further away from health rather than bringing us together and helping us understand what is in actuality happening. It is much more of a problem if you live in Minnesota and you're eating avocados. Okay, explain. Transportation. You are now transporting food from Mexico or you're transporting food from Valley in California to Minnesota or Alaska. Yeah. For the environment, it's harder on the environment. Because transportation contributes. So if agriculture as a whole contributes 9%, electricity, transportation, and industry make up the rest.

Yeah. Yeah. And this is just the facts. Yeah. And really, when you think about it, our meat consumption has already gone down. we're already down. The red meat consumption, I think, is down between 15 and 17 percent over the last decade.

How come? I don't know. I mean, maybe it's partially the narrative. Yeah, could be. Continue to decrease our meat consumption. Obesity rates have increased. You know, as it relates to greenhouse gas in the environment, it's really more of a population issue.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And also, what about this? What about all the food we're wasting? Yep. That has to go somewhere. Yep.

But everything, but we blame meat for everything. And it's actually just a scapegoat of a much bigger issue and a much bigger problem, which is having kind of a dysregulation and communication. In addition to agenda, for example, something like the game changers, agenda and media pushing things forward that are actually not evidence-based, not scientific. And, you know, someone would ask me, well, why do you care so much about this? I'm going to tell you why. I was lucky enough to train under one of the world leading experts in protein metabolism, who 20 years later is still my mentor. This is a relationship of 20 years. And his

name is Dr. Donald Lehman. And I studied protein metabolism. I studied human nutrition in my undergrad. Then, you know, I went to do a fellowship. I went to go medical school, residency, and then a fellowship. And my fellowship was in nutritional sciences and geriatrics. So I did. clinical work in geriatrics, and then I did clinical research in obesity. I was absolutely not prepared to be a geriatrician. I don't know. Have you ever worked with the end of life? No, no. I mean, well, I have been with patients. I've been in four situations where I was with patients as they passed. That's the closest. How many patients was that? You said four. Four. Yeah. Can you imagine doing that?

and seeing those kind of patients, 30 patients a day. Oh, yeah. No. So could you imagine what that would be like? That would be soul-sucking. Yeah. Devastating. So you're going to work and you know for your entire day, you're going to get up and do research

in the morning. So you can get up at 4 a.m. You're going to go do biopsies, muscle biopsies. Then you're going to go and round on the patients that are all end of life, injured, you know, typically demented or something. you know, you're talking 30, you might see 30 patients in a day for two years. Wow. So this being brings me back to why is this concept so important to me?

And this is actually where the concept of muscle centric medicine was born, it was that, you know, after the first couple months of being at the bedside of these patients that perhaps will never walk again and seeing and seeing how crippled and working in nursing homes, I rounded on nursing homes every weekend. I mean, it was so devastating to see the way in which end of life happens. And you have to understand that it's directly related to their capacity to hold on muscle. Right, right. The muscle is actually the organ of longevity.

This is true. It is a secretory organ. And where protein plays a role in that is that, you know, it's so fascinating. Right now, we have the internet and we have groups and there's lots of conversations. So there's a lot of debate that happens in the middle, in your 30s, 40s, 50s, even your 60, you know, everyone's debating. But on the extreme end, there is no debate what is going to help support a body. And, you know, in the middle, when we're all healthy and young and vital, we can all fight about, you know, you should be vegan. no, you should be carnivore. And there's this incredible conversation. But I am telling you, as that

trajectory happens, no one is arguing. When you are sitting at the bedside of a person who is never going to walk again, cannot remember their daughter's name, you don't have that conversation anymore. Interesting. You know, and I feel like I am talking so much and you're being so generous with no, no, I think it's, no, the way, the way I love to get. information to people so that they can change the paradigm in which they're sitting in is, I think you have to have come above it and have a bigger vision for it before you get into the detail of it. So I am accessible. I love being able to share all this. Yeah, like I'm sucked into the story because I think that makes incredible sense. Right. And like I told you before we got on

in that in our Resetter Collaborative on Facebook, where we all fast together, we have to break up fights between the vegans and the carnivores all the time. And I agree with you that there is a place in which we can come together. I love how you started this out that we're not enemies of each other. And there's a way to rise above the rhetoric and the little social media sound bites and think a little deeper for ourselves. So help us understand why protein builds muscle. Like, and can I get protein in broccoli? I mean, broccoli has protein. So let me, before I tell you that, let me highlight this, say, end of life individual or this person who is much older in a nursing home.

And we have all seen them, right? We've all seen our parents become frail. We have all seen the, you know, the walker, the whole thing. Muscle has to be fed. Later on in life, muscle must be fed. it is a non-negotiable, a plant-based diet, unfortunately, while you can navigate that when you are younger, absolutely cannot sustain an individual when we think about what is medically acceptable for their well-being.

Wow. And this is really powerful to understand because the conversation isn't just about, is protein good for me? Should you be on a vegan diet? Should you be on a carnivore diet? That is a little linear, right? When we are thinking about this as groups in your group, we have to think, where am I at in my age? What kind of activity am I doing? How metabolically flexible am I?

What is my carbohydrate tolerance? What is actually the information that I am getting and where am I right now, if that makes sense? Yeah. We'll talk about protein and we'll talk about why protein is so important for muscle. And this is absolutely essential to understand. and really not up for debate. These are hard, fast, biological numbers that I'm going to share with you.

Are you ready? Yeah, go for it. In order for muscle to be, quote, stimulated, this concept of muscle protein synthesis, it requires branch chain amino acids. It requires specifically an amino acid called lucene. And lucine is one of the essential amino acids, meaning we must get it from our diet.

And actually, I will come back at the end if you remind me there is some new rodent data that would say that we may be able to make essential amino acids. I love it. I love it. You know, humans, but really interesting. So we need these amino acids, these essential amino acids, particularly lucene. So there's lucine, isolucin, and baline. These branch chain amino acids, which are very high in animal products, specifically loosening at a certain threshold to then stimulate. skeletal muscle.

Okay. What does that look like? Okay, well, two and a half grams is roughly 30 grams of high quality protein, whether it's beef, chicken, egg, fish has a little lower quality protein. They're gravity-bearing animals. So you need this 30 grams to actually trigger the stimulus. Okay. Okay.

30 grams at one time? At one time, great point. You cannot sip on a protein shake throughout the day. you must reach that amino acid threshold in the blood to trigger this response. Okay. Non-negotiable as we age, this response becomes more challenging. Skeletal muscle is a nutrient sensing organ. And its capacity to sense nutrients, specifically protein, decrease as we age.

Wow. Because of why? Is that, I mean, can I? Anabolic resistance. And it's something cellularly that happens. and it happens to everybody, the issue then becomes, how do you overcome anabolic resistance? So anabolic resistance means that as you age, your body becomes less sensitive to being able to be stimulated by the protein, the proteins that you're ingesting.

So for example, my daughter, who's two years old, I could give her five grams of protein, and that five grams of protein, you know, could give her just maybe one ounce of beef and and then some vegetables, she will get a max anabolic response to her muscle. Okay. Because she's young and she's driven. Yeah. Very cute. Quite a handful.

Typically ends up on the floor. So thank goodness for the fact that she can eat just a small amount of protein and get a max stimulation. Okay. Whereas you or I, if we eat 30 grams of protein, and this is animal-based protein, because of that lusine content. For example, if you wanted to get that in quinoa, you would need about four to six cups of quinoa.

Wow. To reach that threshold. Wow. It becomes metabolically unfavorable as it relates to caloric consumption and carbohydrates. Got it. Same thing with like broccoli. I mean, broccoli has protein.

Right. So broccoli, the amount of broccoli you would have to eat to reach that threshold of, two and a half grams of a minimum at one time to trigger skeletal muscle would be, I can't even, I mean, that would be so difficult. Your stomach would hurt. I mean, you're talking about a ton of broccoli. Right.

Now, you bring up an interesting point. And this is when we think about protein and we think about the amino acids, does broccoli have protein amino acids? Absolutely. Does say beef have protein amino acids? Absolutely. These amino acids exist in different amounts. they're all there, but they exist in different amounts.

And it's so critical to understand that it's the amount that makes the metabolism. Okay. The amount of protein is one sitting. At one sitting. It must be at one sitting because think about it, if you are a subthreshold, if you are subthreshold of that loose. So it's a, so basically it's like a car. You can't, you've got to be able to turn the car on.

Turn it fully on all the other amino acids to then lay down skeletal muscle. Love it. Yeah, good analogy. If you were to drink a protein shake over a period of time, you would never reach that level in the blood needed to trigger skeletal muscle. When you're young, you can do it. When you're young and, you know, when I say young, really, if you're growing. Because when you are young, you are driven by hormones, growth hormones, things of this nature. As you age and you've stopped growing higher, you grow wider.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's really interesting because there's this big argument, our animal proteins and plant proteins equal. Well, they're equal as it relates to do they all have amino acids? Yes. But do they have the correct amino acids in the correct amounts? Well, that would take some navigating.

Typically, and this makes logical sense. When you think about skeletal muscle, right? skeletal muscle needs, like feeds like, for example, beef is made of skeletal muscle, right? So the skeletal muscle of beef feeds skeletal muscle of human. Yeah. Eamino acid profiles are nearly the same. And in essence, it makes the correct amount of proteins needed for that. Plants make the correct amount of proteins for plants.

Right. And we are not plants. No, some. No, we are not. No. I was trying to make a very bad mom joke, but that didn't happen. It's all good. Okay.

So what I'm hearing, and I just want to bring it down to as simple of a concept as possible, is that if I'm a vegetarian or a vegan and I'm in my 20s, that might not be as detrimental to my health as if I'm 50 or 60. Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. And the other way to stimulate skeletal muscle is through exercise. Right. You can make up for a lower protein amount. If you're a vegan or vegetarian, then by training, you can protect that skeletal muscle. But you're absolutely right. When you're,

I was vegetarian. I was too. I was two in my 20s. Yeah. So I was vegetarian. I was actually macrobiotic at a point. Wow. Yeah, I was really all in. Impressive. I was quite impressed. But you can navigate that. And listen, and we can talk about dietary stress. I don't want to, you know, really put off vegans or vegetarians because the reality is, can you get everything you need? Yes, you can. You have to supplement wisely, whether it's with branch chain amino acids, you know, B12, you know, iron.

There's all kinds of things that you could supplement with. Right. Make that lifestyle work. It just takes a lot of thought. Right. Right. And that's what, that was going to be my next question. You know, part of why I decided to go vegetarian.

I was vegetarian in my 20s, pretty much my whole 20s, was because, of John Robbins' book, Diet for a New America. And I read that and I was like, okay, I'm going to do my environmental thing. It's better for me to not eat meat. For 10 years, I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now. I was got chronic fatigue syndrome. I like really, but I didn't do good vegetarian. Right. So, you know, how do we rectify the humanity part of this? in terms of the emotional part of eating. I don't want to eat meat. What if I don't want,

you know, like it's just hard. It's an animal and there's compassion. And, you know, if I'm Buddhist, I have like a Buddhist philosophy. Like,

it's really hard to think about hurting an animal. It is. It is. And I think that at the only thing that I can say is at some point, the conversation then becomes, are you willing to give up your health for theirs? You mentioned later on in life in your 50s and 60s, if you are plant-based in your 50s and 60s, the majority of people, it will be detrimental for. The majority of people, I will tell you, I was telling you before we got on is I still have a, I still see patients in clinic.

I have a concier medical practice. And the vegan and vegetarians for the most part, and I don't have many in my practice, but over my 15 years of practice, I have seen some, they tend to be the, the ones with the lowest bone density, the ones with the most nutrient deficiencies, a lot of cavity issues, a lot of hair issues. But that being said, you can still supplement wisely for those individuals. And I'm going to mention one more thing. I would say about 2% of the population really thrive on a vegan and vegetarian diet. Yeah.

I've seen some people. My yoga instructor is one of them. So this is where the new data comes out. And I think I really enjoy what you said, Mindy, before, was that you have to come from a big perspective. And I can certainly, as a protein expert, I certainly cannot argue that I have seen vegan and vegetarian individuals thrive. Yeah. And it's really important to be open-minded.

What I think we're going to see is those that eat a more vegan vegetarian diet have a different kind of microbiome. And this microbiome becomes similar to a ruminant. And they actually can make their. own amino acids. Oh, that's powerful. And this is mind-blowing, and this changes absolutely everything about what we know and what we think. Is that the majority of individuals, no, but is there some emerging data in rodents?

There's a recent paper in nature that had come out. Dr. Don Lehman was one of those individuals on that study where we are seeing that humans or that rodents, you know, as a proof of concept, can make essential, it's possible that they may be able to make a central one. Crazy. Okay. So now let me ask you this question. This is something that I've analyzed because I really do like my heart is with the vegetarians. Like I get that part. I see people like my yoga instructor who just is thriving with it with a vegetarian diet. And one of the things that I've noticed is many of the people that thrive with a vegetarian diet are blood type A. And if you go back and you look at the old theory of the blood type diet, do you think blood type would have anything to do with it and is how's our blood type and our microbiome connected? I have not studied that. I think it's really into. I was actually looking at it's so wild that you say that. I was literally looking at the data yesterday for blood typing. And the data

actually doesn't support evidence of its efficacy. Interesting. There's no reason that, which is really interesting because it makes consciously, I was reading up about there. There's an allergy to meet from the Lone Star Tick. Have you heard of that? No. Yeah. There, I have a patient with it that actually has an allergy to red meat and he was bitten by a lone star tick. And I think as any good clinician, we do literature search and we're just like, how is that possible? And it's real.

And anyway, I was thinking, are those individuals with Lyme, do they have a particular blood type? Because is there something that is provoked that some people get sick and some people don't? That's a really long story for saying that I was just looking at the literature for blood typing. And again, there's no evidence to suggest that it actually works. So perhaps the individuals that do better on the vegan vegetarian diet like your yoga instructor do so because their microbiome is more suited to that. Which is a key idea behind why we cannot point fingers at each other because we all have different microbiomes. So if, you know, I look at my yoga instructor and I'm like, good on. you like it's great that it works for you. I wish it had worked for me. It didn't work for me.

Eating more meat works better for me. And the microbiome is a great explanation. I love that. And we can't argue that these numbers, I mean, we know that two and a half grams of leucine stimulates skeletal muscle. We know these are, we know that there are certain high quality proteins that are required in a certain amount to stimulate skeletal muscle. Yeah. There is no argument about that. And it's very, interesting when you see the groups, the carnivores, and it doesn't mean that a fully carnivore diet is the right diet. There's something to be said for phytonutrients. There's something to be said for fiber. There's a lot of support for fiber. I think it goes back to what you're ultimately saying,

Mindy, is that we do have bio-individual natures. Yep. And there are things in science that we know to be true and can be proven over and over and over again. Yeah. We know that protein is very important for skeletal muscle. We know that a certain amount stimulates it. So, for example, if you are going to be fasting, you are going to want to target just for practical application, a minimum of 30 grams. That's going to be way too low if you are targeting, if you are fasting for long periods of time. You're going to want to hit anywhere from 40 to 55 grams of protein per meal. If you're having two meals a day, it's what I call protein pulsing. I have a plan that I do protein pulsing where that first meal and that last meal are a very high in protein.

Yeah. Because you're stimulating skeletal muscle at that in that way. Yeah. And I want to get it makes sense. And I actually now I feel like I've got all these questions on different science that I saw. So I want to get into the protein pulsing and cycling in it for a moment. Here's a question before we leave the microbiome issue.

So the way that I had always been taught about the microbiome is that plants. feed our good bacteria. And then when I dove into understanding why the carnivore diet was working so well for people with autoimmune issues, I started to see that bacteriades, which is prevalent, it can be easily fed by collagen in meat actually does better. You can feed that set of bacteria better with a collagen rich steak than you can with a salad. Is that correct? Like, are we feeding certain bacteria better with meat than we do with plants?

I think that that is definitely a possibility. I think that's a really good insight. And likely it would make sense that you would feed different bacteria differently, depending on the substrate that you're using. Absolutely. With autoimmune, I've thought about this quite a bit. Food, it's interesting. So once your immune system is upregulated, it seems to be very reactive,

regardless of what kind of plant you're eating. It just seems to be very reactive. You're absolutely right. Individuals that go carnivore, I have seen clinically inflammatory markers go down. They rheumatoid factors go down. Is it because they are now calorie controlled? Maybe, but I think it's more likely that whatever is up regulating their immune system, they're no longer exposed to. Yeah. Have you also seen that the carnivore diet will upregulate T regulatory cells and calm that immune system down? I saw a study on that as well. I haven't seen it, but I would love to. I would love to. I'll find it and send it to you because that was, that was interesting as well. The other thing, again, before we leave the microbiome, because the microbiome, maybe that, listen, maybe they'll be a part two of this interview.

Yeah, there might be. I feel like I didn't know I had so many questions for you. This is so exciting. is so I learned this from actually Dr. Zach Bush in my conversations with him, that we look at the firmacutes versus bacteriitis ratio. And when firmacutes are really high and bacteriities are low, you are going to store calories more. So you can take two individuals and feed them the same amount of food, same amount of calories. If I have more firmacutes than you, I'm going to store it as fat more. So we've got to bring bacteriides up. and eating meat is one of those ways we can bring bacteriories up when we eat plants,

when we eat standard American diet, when we're on antibiotics, routine antibiotics, we bring pharmacutes up. Have you heard that? I have. I have. I'd like to also point out that there are other things that happen when you eat proteins. So it increased the thermo-effective feeding. It increases the, you know, it takes more energy to dispose of the nitrogen in protein.

So you're literally like raising your metabolism. Yes. Yes. That's exactly what you're doing. Okay. There are other factors. We would just have to really think about, I mean, the data for protein, you're talking 30 plus years. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a ton of good data that says prioritizing protein is fantastic. You know, I'm biased. So I'm very careful about the words that I use. I'm very aware of my own biases that I've, you know, study this for two decades. And certainly this is really. what I believe to be the key to health. And it's totally misunderstood.

Yeah, I love this. So, and I agree. I think I also want to create a world where all beliefs can unify. So, okay, let's go into the amount and then I want to go into the type. So some of the studies that I have seen is not only the amount, but how often you're eating. So in the fasting world, we focus a lot on stimulating autophagy. But then on the other end of that is mTOR.

So what the research I've seen is with protein cycling, 20 to 30 grams, every couple of hours is the best way to stimulate mTOR. So if you have a day of autophagy and you follow that with some protein cycling and you're alternating in and out of that, that to me seems like the most logical way to build strong lean muscle. Okay. What do you do that? I'm ready. The concept of stimulating mTOR is very important. Regarding the data, we don't actually know how long. So let me back up for your listeners.

MTOR is mechanistic target of rapamycin. And mTOR, this complex exists in every single cell in the body, right? So it exists in the skeletal muscle. And in the skeletal muscle, mTOR is exquisitely central. sensitive to amino acids. The liver and pancreas have mTOR in them, and they are more sensitive to carbohydrates and insulin. The brain has mTOR. So it is just a growth, not initiator, but it is a growth propagator, right? So it is not an initiation because the reason I say this is individuals will say, well, protein stimulates mTOR, therefore it stimulates cancer.

the data does not support that. That is absolutely not true. M-Tor is actually stimulated in the body by different substrates, not just protein. Okay. This is another example of a narrative gone wrong. It's really important for people to understand. M-Tor is in all cells. M-Tor is essential.

You want to trigger m-tore and skeletal muscle. The way in which you do that is through amino acids. Okay. 20 grams of amino acids is subthreshold that will not stimulate mTOR depending on your age. Okay. You must increase that. The older you get in order to stimulate mTOR, you must hit a minimum of 30 grams. At one sitting.

At one sitting. And how many times throughout the day? Great question. we know that it takes, and this is more of extrapolated data, between four and five hours for this system to reset. So for example, if you were to do small post-pulsed meals of mTOR, I would not recommend that. Okay. You not want to over-stimulate mTOR, not because of m-tore in skeletal muscle, but because of m-tore in liver, pancreas, in other parts of the body, you don't want to continuously stimulate it. Okay.

It's a growth propagator. Right. When you think about how many times you want to stimulate mTOR throughout the day, one must think about what is their goal? Is their goal, number one, weight loss? Is their goal body composition? And essentially by body composition, I mean increasing skeletal muscle. And to your point, is it autophagate?

Right. So if, and I would argue that it would be very difficult to be, in a state of it'sophagy, and you know, I'm just guessing here, and in a state of building muscle, those things would, those things would, they don't make sense to go together. No, they don't. If you, now, again, the other way to stimulate mTOR is high carbohydrates, smaller meals throughout the day. Not a good plan, right?

You don't want to over-stimulate this complex. That being said, we believe that it. it becomes stimulated and it takes four to five hours to reset. So the soonest that you would want to eat another meal would be between four and five hours. Interesting. Okay. So now let's look at if we've compressed our eating window. So like one of my favorite studies right now that I've been geeking out on is if we take a high fat,

high sugar diet and we compress it in a 10 hour eating window that there appears to be this metabolic, immunity. Like you don't tend to have the damage that a high fat, high sugar diet will create if you compress it into 10 hours. So let's just apply that to all food. So I'm going 14 hours of fasting. I'm doing 10 hours. I eat. I break my fast with protein. I do 30 grams. I hit that threshold. Great. Now what I'm hearing you say is just don't eat for another four to five hours. And you can meet that. So within that compressed window, you could easily feed. If you needed to, you could feed three times. Yeah, because you're in 10 hours.

Yeah. 10 hours you could, it doesn't, I mean, this is, you know, you're going 14 hours without eating. Right. So therefore, you're not stimulate, you know, more than 50% of the day, you're not stimulating mTOR. Right. Right.

You could easily do. I definitely don't recommend one meal of the day, one meal a day. And then, of course, depends on your age. If you're young, I don't care. You can do whatever you want, right? Right. Congratulations. Four months through the roof.

Good for you. Nobody cares. And we don't think of us as $1,500, okay? But for the rest of us who are not in our 20s, then we have to be very strategic at how we're managing our foods. Can you do one meal a day? Yes. Do you want to do one meal a day every day? If you do that and you're up against anabolic resistance, then over the course of your

life, you will lose skeletal muscle. When you are young, it doesn't matter. you can build it back. As you go through perimenopause. Yep. As you go through andro paws, I want to include the men here. Yeah, well said. Muscle becomes very difficult to maintain.

And this is the moment you've got to be very strategic. I think fasting is a great way to control calories. I think it's a great way to entrain your circadian rhythm. We know that food does stimulate the circadian rhythm. I haven't seen the particular study that you are talking about, but I have looked at multiple studies as it relates to compressing feeding windows. And one of the things that it allows for is it certainly allows for calorie control. And that, you know, is essential.

Also, clinically, it allows for bowel rest. I have individuals that have chronic GI issues go through periods of fasting and a lot of, I mean, of course, you have to take care of the underlying pathology, but it certainly does alleviate the bowel. You know, it gives your stomach, gives your digestive tract arrest. Yeah. Yeah. And what I really advocate for is fasting variation with all these things because anything done the same way over and over again is never going to be good. How many? So I'm a 52 year old woman. How much protein do I need in a day? I really resonate as I move through menopause. I could build muscle like nobody's business in my, you know, 30s and 20s. And once I hit 40s, oh my gosh, it started to break down. So how much protein would I need? Well, what is your target weight? Gosh, you know, I haven't weighed myself in years, but I'm somewhere between 125,

130 is about where I typically... And you like, and do you like to be that weight? Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah. For you, I would say at the high end, you could easily hit 130 grams. And you do you need that much? You don't need that much per day.

I would say that if you are looking to lose body fat, I prioritize protein, protein forward is really the way to go. Again, because of your age, I'm assuming you're not menstruating. Maybe you are, but I'm assuming that. Yeah, I'm in that gray area. I never know. It depends what day it is. Okay. What month it is, but it's been several months now. Okay. So you're kind of in that perimenopausal timeframe. This is the time where sarcopenia really goes up. This is the time where skeletal muscle and anabolic resistance really happens. Testosterone levels change. Estrogen actually does play a part in skeletal muscle.

This changes. Thyroid. All of these things change, which actually make it harder to maintain and build muscle. So for you, because of your specific needs, I would say put you at the higher end. I would say if you wanted to, 130 grams of protein would be absolutely suitable. People would say, wow, that's really high. Now, the next question I would ask you is how many times are you eating? I eat pretty much like twice a day.

I'll break my fast at noon, 2 o'clock, and then once I open up my eating window, I'll eat twice a day. And when I eat, I eat. Like, I'm not trying to count calories for anything. Well, I think that we should try this. I think we should really increase your protein. And I would say if you're doing two meals a day, maybe we shoot for 55, 60 grams per meal. I doubt you'll be able to eat that.

that much, I would be happy if you hit 55 grams because now you've maxed out muscle protein synthesis. Yeah. This would be a strategy to max out that system. We, I eat a lot of, like I, proteins kind of my go to my, in fact, my kids, they joke. They're like, are we having steak again tonight? We like, we have big stakes. I mean, we're really, and I want to talk about organ meats and things like that as well. So I'm a huge protein fan and this is, I'm a recovering vegetarian.

So I just want to point you that out. Oh, me too. Me too. So, okay, so if I eat in relation to my glucose levels. So let's talk about that because when I first started using a CGM, when I ate protein, my blood sugar would spike. Recently, this year in January, I wore one for the whole month. Every time I had a big steak, I don't know how many grams it was, but I'm going to say

40 grams. My glucose went down. Yeah. Why? Okay. this is a great question. I've been dying to have somebody answer it for me, so this is awesome. If protein actually does cause an insulin spike, but it is a phase one insulin release,

meaning what is already in the pancreas is release. It is a phase. There is typically with carbohydrates, there's a two phase response, the release of insulin and then the generation of more insulin to bring down blood sugar. Okay. When you eat protein, protein does cause an initial insulin release. And the thought is, is this helps stimulate muscle, right? So mTOR insulin is one of the things that stimulates muscle.

So you will see a spike in insulin. Okay. As it relates to glucose for every 100 grams of protein that you eat, 60 grams through gluconeogenesis of carbohydrates is created. Okay. For every 100 grams, you'll get roughly 60 grams of carbohydrates of protein. Wow. Okay.

Now, if you are a protein forward eater for all my carnivores out there, you become very good at generating your own glucose. What you typically, and you'll do this through the liver, and what you will typically see clinically is your, blood sugar will actually remain a little bit higher over a 24-hour period of time because your body is generating its own glucose rather than you eating carbohydrates and having an ebb and flow. Okay. Is that good? Yes, it's good because you are doing what the body is designed to do. Okay. It is maintaining blood glucose. And we're not talking about high levels of blood glucose,

but insulin levels will be low. So the home IR will be low. Okay. Insulin resistance will be low. If I'm looking at blood, you know, I'll see, you know, if you're thinking about how much, you know, if you look at the markers of insulin, typically it's, you know, you look at five, you know, five, you wouldn't want it being over five. Typically you see two and a half because you're not requiring extra insulin.

You're not requiring robust insulin because your body is actually, you know, number one, while protein causes a phase one insulin release, it doesn't cause a phase two. And if you ate 100 grams of carbohydrates versus 100 grams of protein, the insulin response would be totally different. Yeah. And the blood sugar response would be totally different. Yeah. Now, the fact that you eat a steak and you get a little hypoglycemic post-pranial hypoglycemia,

I think that's interesting. Do I know why? I'm not totally sure unless your nutrition at that meal is unbalanced, where you're, your blood glucose is dipping, or you're spiking your glucose too high and then you're getting a secondary drop. Yeah. But I don't feel hypoglycemic. And actually the Nutrisense people said, oh, that can be just a fit.

This is, was their response as this efficiency of being able to break down those macro nutrients. So I didn't think of it as a bad thing. I just more thought of it as, oh, that's interesting. I've never seen that for myself before. So, yeah. Yeah. I'll do it again.

Now I'll let you know. Okay. The idea behind if I eat meat, my cholesterol is going up. Totally not real. Okay. Explain that. Your body dietary cholesterol doesn't impact for the most part, blood level cholesterol. That has been disproven for years and years.

In fact, they took it out of the guidelines. They took it out of the dietary guidelines. It doesn't even exist in there anymore, but it's an old narrative. The body will make its own cholesterol. Okay. You know, you have a natural set point. When you see triglycerides go up, it's perhaps excess carbohydrates. So that will definitely make an impact.

And if you are a hyper responder, I was just talking to, we have a cardiologist in my practice, Dr. Michael Twyman, who everyone should follow. You should bring him on. He's amazing. And when you have excess LDL, is it possible that it's familial? And then those individuals should not really be on a very high fat diet. But there's a lot of controversy about LDL and particles. But when you speak to a cardiologist who is in practice, you have to restratify.

He says, you know, if you look at their lipid profile and you know that they're a hyper responder and they have a calcium score, you know, that is elevated, this is someone who should be very careful about their LDL. So it does matter. Despite the narrative that we're hearing, it doesn't. It does. And these are guys in practice for a very long time. Yeah.

This is why there's no one-size-fits-all diet plan. You're absolutely right. And I caution people because for the average person with no cardiovascular history and no issues with their LDL, they could probably eat excess calories. No, but they could certainly eat a high fat diet and be okay. But if you are an individual who happens to be a hyper responder, you probably shouldn't. Right, right. So interesting. Okay, so if I want to eat a steak every night, I'm going to be okay. Okay.

There's no problem. There's never been evidence to suggest that eating red meat is a problem. And that's the evidence doesn't support it. Mind blowing for some of the people listening to this. Let me point them to the IR committee. And this is a committee that determined a long time ago that beef was a carcinogen. Red meat was a carcinogen. The IR committee. And then what they didn't disclose was when they, made these claims and they made these recommendations is that they looked at the data sets and they threw out all the high quality randomized control trials. They said, oh, these trials are too small. I'm going to throw them out. But anyone in research knows that randomized control trials,

that's the pinnacle of evidence. Yeah. The IR committee who actually, what they also didn't tell you, is largely vegetarian, went in there with a bias throughout all the high quality evidence, took epidemiology data, which is data that's just collected observational data, and took that and analyzed that. Yeah. So one of the committee members actually started to speak out about it. His name is David Plurfeld, and they should, your listeners, you should, we'll send you the study or I'll send you some of the commentary about it. When you read it, you realize that, you know, it was a narrative.

The evidence doesn't ever support, the data doesn't ever support red meat and cancer. The next thing someone needs to answer is what is the mechanism of action? What mechanism of action and what kind of cancer? These are all things that we have to ask. Yeah. So, you know, not to get political here, but when our president comes out and we have a worldwide audience and says everybody needs to go plant base and we're in the middle of a pandemic, what is that doing to our immune systems right now?

It's the worst piece of advice I could ever give someone. That is frankly the truth. It is the worst piece of advice I could ever give someone. Yeah, I would agree. How, I mean, number one, you know, high quality nutrients that are bioavailable come from meat. You know, and it's not even a, I don't care if an individual's vegetarian or, you know, carnivore. I don't care. I'm a clinician.

I have spent 17 years in education. Right. I don't care. Whatever a patient wants to do, my job is to help support them. Right. The idea that you would make a recommendation. and say that individuals should go plant-based, I've been at the other end of that.

Yeah. This will destroy people's health. It will destroy people's health. It will make them weak. You cannot support skeletal muscle in the same way. What about B vitamins, iron, selenium, zinc? I mean, bioavailable nutrients. What about the other things like carnitine and creatine?

I don't know. And not even. Yeah, go ahead. Not even to mention the blood sugar of what when people are plant-based. I was just going to say. You want Alzheimer's? That's the best way to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. that's crazy screw yourself up metabolically don't control your blood sugar um yeah you know and if you're going to be plant based the chances are the i mean the people in your group are going to be likely very wise and they're not going to be overweight they're into fasting they're probably plant based for reasons that may be more emotional or whatever it is but the majority if you're going to try to reach those thresholds of amino acids the amount of calories you're going to consume is going to be astronomical. When, you know, carbohydrates are at a threshold, people have to understand that the way in which you eat carbohydrates are a meal threshold. When you are talking about insulin, it's very

fascinating to me that we talk about carbohydrates as how many grams per day. It's a not a gram per day deal. It is a meal per meal tolerance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. So, okay, and I can chat with you about protein all day long. So, but I have one other major question, which is, Are all animal protein equal. I'll tell you what, what here we're on a Friday tomorrow night. I actually am going to be grilling chicken hearts we bought at the farmer's market. I'm trying to experiment a little bit more with some of the organ meats. So if do I want to eat chicken, do I get a different nutrient amino acid profile than beef?

And what happens when I eat heart or have liver patte? How does that all that? I'll be over at your house for dinner. And I'm family. Do you have a recipe? pee for me? I am hands down at the worst cook ever. Okay. I'll let you know what I find one. Here's the air fryer and some liver. Go for it. Okay. We're going to do it on the big green egg. So we got a whole plan around it. You guys are, you know, very high tech. I am not like that.

The question is, are number one, proteins across species the same? And I would say if they are gravity bearing. If they have four legs and they walk or if they are chicken and they're gravity bearing, then they have seven grams of protein per one ounce. You can arguably say that and be confident that, you know, whether it's six or seven grams of protein is roughly that. Fish, because it swims, not gravity bearing is a little bit lower and that has about five grams of protein per one ounce. Okay. Now we move to Orgy, organ meats. Organ meats are actually different as it relates to their amino acid profile. And it makes sense because it's not skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is what's very high in the essential amino

acids. As it relates to liver, I don't actually know how much lucene is in four ounces of liver, but I can tell you that it's going to be different than skeletal muscle. Interesting. So the reason to, would it be more or less, do you think? It would be less. Okay. So, but now you said this earlier that like will feed like. So my thought when I'm looking at all the different organs I could have bought from this rancher was, okay, well, let me get some heart. I don't, I haven't, I don't know if I've been feeding my heart the right, you know, nutrient profile. We got liver. So we're going to try to make some liver patte. We've got bone marrow. We did that last week. So each one of these, I can just pretty much go, heart's going to treat heart,

liver is going to treat liver. Bone marrow will support healthy bones. Um, Is that totally true? I think that a lot of that is true. I don't know, you know, bones are made from protein primarily. I don't know if the fat and bone marrow is going to support that. I certainly can't say that for sure, but there's co-cutent in heart. We definitely know that that supports cardiac function. Liver does wondrous things for nearly every part of the body.

I mean, every part of the body is being a little dramatic, but fat's all. valuable vitamins. I mean, you can't go wrong with liver in general. Right. Yeah. It's just getting it, stomaking it. I mean, oh my gosh. So that's what we tried to feed our son as his first food. What? Yeah. I know. How did he do? What did he do? I'm like, please do not project out of vomit. Because Aries, our daughter, was great with it. Leo just cannot be bothered. But. Oh, my God. I love their names. Yeah. So we have Aries Hunter and Leonidas. Leonidas Michael. Oh my gosh.

Were they named for their astrological sign? No. Wow. I love names. My daughter's, my firstborn, her name is Bodhi, which is the tree the Buddha meditated under and became enlightened. Yeah. And my son's name is Paxton, which Pax, we call them Pax means, you know, peace.

So we were really intentional with names as well. So I love that. I was telling you earlier that my husband was in the Navy for a decade and really, that's kind of where the names, a little, where the names came from. He's very much a Spartan kind of guy. I love it. Oh, great names. And they're good, strong names. Love that. So, okay, well, this was fascinating. I could chat with you, and I definitely want to bring you back on. I'm very curious just in what we've talked about, what kind of questions my audience has. So you guys, you know, put it, leave us a review with your questions, email us so that you can go deep. I'm happy to come back on to talk to

your Facebook group, if that's what you do. If you do lies, I'm happy to come answer questions. It's really important, you know, because it's so controversial that this information gets lost. And unfortunately, there's a lot more opinion in this kind of science than there isn't other kinds of science. With that being said, I just want to tell people that as we age, these concepts become non-negotiable. Yeah. And that's why it's so important to understand from just a fundamental, level and I'm happy to be a resource. I'm happy to, you know, come together and answer any questions because it's that important to understand. So, okay, I have five rapid fire questions.

Okay. Some of them don't have to do with protein. So let's start off with this one. We're putting together a book list. We love books of all of our guests. We want to put your favorite reads. So what book do you feel like everybody should read? And it can be fiction or nonfiction. So Relentless is one by Tim Grover. Okay. Beautiful. We really have to understand how you operate and where you want to be operating. Okay. Number one. Number two, the upside of stress, which is Kelly McGonical, understanding that stress is not

just fight or flight, that actually it's a very good mechanism. It's a tendon, a friend. It can generate the courage response. Okay. And the last book, I would say, hmm, let me think about that. Well, what I'm really liking, and this is a little cerebral and kind of poetic. So it's not such an easy read, but it's David White. And it is, I think it's called the Pilgrimage of Work.

Oh, I love the name of it. It's, you know, and here it is right here. So I will tell you this, I read all the time. That is probably, oh, crossing the unknown sea, working as a pilgrimage, pilgrimage of identity. And this really talks about having the courage, and he's so amazing, but it really talks about, you know, that sometimes it takes courage to ultimately be your authentic self and how that becomes expressed in the world and really what that takes. Because ultimately, I would say, Mindy and you may agree that initially you may be at war with yourself. Oh, yeah. You won't, right?

There will always be. A lot of times. Right? Not even initially. Daily. And, you know, whatever modality an individual uses to ultimately be the highest expression of their self is it's important for humanity. Yeah.

I love that. Okay. Second question. Okay. What's your favorite protein? What do you like to? What's your go-to protein? Beef.

Okay. Beautiful. Okay. What's the weirdest protein you've ever eaten? Oh, gosh. This is with Ashley Bunnhowton. Do you know her? She's incredible, too.

Very dear friend. So it was like pancreas. It was just gross sweetbread. She conned me into it. Yeah, I won't be eating that. That sounds bad. Okay. What if you could go back to your 20 year old self and you could give her? You got it. Keep going. Everything, just keep going. I love it. I love it. Yeah. Okay. And then my last question, I think I'll know your answer, but it's always interesting to hear if you had one message for the world that you could get in everybody's brain. What would it be? Do I only have have one, it's going to be increase your dietary protein per meal amount. Awesome.

You have to be protein. At least 30 grams. At least 30 grams, protein forward. I mean, it depends on your age. But come on, at least 30 grams, you can nail that per meal. You can understand that high quality protein is essential for the way in which you age. Hey, resetters. I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews.

And those of you that have left me comments on iTunes. I just greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you're enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I've learned in just interacting with so many people is that we've really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me, the Resetter podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life, about mindset in a way that we may not be getting on social media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say, give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me.

Because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it's impacting your life. So please let us know if there's anything we can do to make this podcast more customized to you, to make it better. We are now officially in season two, and we are working to bring you the best conversations that health influencers have, that mindset changers can give, and to really deliver you something that you're not able to get anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube, from the bottom of my heart, I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this

journey with you, and let's get healthy together.