Why Muscle Is Key For Longevity

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

This obesity epidemic isn't quite an obesity epidemic. It is really an epidemic of poor muscle mass, low muscle mass, obesogenic sarcopenia.

Loss and destruction of tissue. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. I know we all want to feel our best as we age, and that comes along with looking good too. Now, I'm sure many of you have struggled with gray hair, and I bet if you're living a healthy, youthful lifestyle, it's making you look older than you actually feel. I see a lot of patients who make an effort to live a clean life, but then they use these toxic hair dyes to feel a little bit younger. The problem with that is that the toxins in dyes like PPD, ammonia, toluene, and even lead acetate, which is bad for you, are linked to everything from infertility to neurologic diseases and even cancer. So you're actually speeding up the aging process within your body when you're trying to reverse it on the outside. That's why I was really intrigued to learn about a product called Hairprint. It's the only hair coloring system in the world that is not a dye. and actually infuses the hair with its own natural pigment called eumelanin to replace your natural hair color. The best part about Hairprint is that it's super clean. It's made from eight food grade ingredients that you can apply yourself at home, and it's available for men and women. So I really think you should ditch those toxic hair dyes for good if you care about your health. Hairprint offers a much safer option and leaves you with natural hair color that also makes your hair healthier, stronger, and shinier thanks to the type of protein it contains. Hairprint doesn't cover up your own variations in hair color, only grays. So it looks really natural. It works for light brown, dark brown, or black hair. They don't have a formula that works for a blonde or red hair yet, but they're working on it. If you want to add something new to your self-care routine and grays have been bothering you, I definitely recommend checking out Hairprint. Right now they're giving Doctor's Pharmacy listeners 20% off with the code HYMAN20. Just go to myhairprint.com and enter the code HYMAN20. Now let's get back to this week's episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Hi, I'm Kaya Perowich, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. You may be surprised to learn that our muscle is actually an organ and plays an essential role in supporting a strong metabolism. And loss of muscle mass and strength as we age is linked to many chronic diseases. Last year, Dr. Hyman sat down with integrative physician Dr. Gabrielle Lyon to discuss why skeletal muscle is key to longevity and why eating more protein as we age is especially important to avoid major problems.

I want to start by asking you about this idea of muscle-centric medicine, which is something people don't think about. You know, our muscle is our biggest organ in the body.

Yeah.

And It's one of the keys to longevity. And the truth is that the silent epidemic out there is this massive loss of muscle in the population. We talk about people being overweight or obese, and we think about fat all the time, but we don't think about muscle. So why should we think about muscle?

You are starting off with a brilliant point. We talk about being over fat, but really the problem is being under muscled. The concept of muscle centric medicine is that muscle is the largest organ in the body. And it is not just essential for locomotion, which is typically what we think about, movement and exercise. But in fact, it's our metabolic currency. It is the largest site for glucose disposal. Talk a lot about diabetes. cardiovascular health, Alzheimer's disease, all of these issues of metabolic regulation are largely controlled and contributed to the amount of muscle that we have. We also think about cachexia, falls, breaks, injuries. Cachexia means the destruction, the wasting of the body.

Yes, you lose muscle and you're skinny and you can even be thin and have no muscle.

Right.

When you think about muscle, it's the reservoir for these amino acids. The more muscle you have, there is less overall mortality. You are stronger. You are able to fend off disease, illness. When you contract your muscle, it secretes things called myokines, which are anti-inflammatory.

So it's like the antidote to inflammation, which is the thing that's causing the risk for almost every chronic disease, whether it's Alzheimer's or cancer or diabetes or.

Heart disease, all related to inflammation. Absolutely, and these concepts relate to body composition. And this obesity epidemic isn't quite an obesity epidemic. It is really an epidemic of poor.

Muscle mass, low muscle mass, obesogenic sarcopenia, loss and destruction of tissue. Now this whole concept of sarcopenia is something that people don't even know what that is. People don't know what obesity is, but it's sort of the other side of the coin. It's this loss of muscle. and, you know, I've written a lot about it and I've talked about strength training and exercise. And the truth is, I really didn't like it because I like to be outside. I like to play. I don't really like to be in a gym. I do, you know, some push-ups and yoga, but he's going to be weightlifting now. You've been pushing me. You've been pushing me to do this for a long time, and I finally started working out with a trainer, and it's actually been fun.

Yeah.

And I'm a little sore, to be honest, but I think I'll get over that. But what happens is as we age.

No matter what weight we are, you.

Could be the same weight at 25 or the 65 and be twice as fat and half as muscle.

Right.

And in the same way. And what turns out is that your hormones, your biology, everything is regulated by your muscle. So you lose muscle, your cortisol levels go up, your stress hormones go up, your growth hormone goes down, your testosterone goes down.

Bad news.

Your insulin goes up, your blood sugar goes up. And yet, this is not something doctors evaluate for, talk about, think about, advise about. Why is that?

Everybody is focusing on the external issue, which is obesity, likely because you can see it, right? But the solution is muscle. And as we age, we get something called anabolic resistance. And that means the muscle has a difficult time utilizing protein. There are all these things working- so.

That you could eat a steak, but it doesn't actually turn into muscle.

Well, you can eat a steak, but the amount that you would have to eat as someone who is above 40 versus 20 is different. Because when you're young, you have, like you said, growth hormone, testosterone, all these hormones running through your blood. As we age, really typically beginning around 40 is those levels begin to decline. Those levels all affect muscle. As those hormonal levels and growth hormone levels decline, we get this kind of resistance. It's not an inability, but it requires more protein, more amino acids to begin to stimulate that tissue. So aging well is very targeted for you. You're at a very critical point in your life because you've been fit and active your whole life. Now you need to continue to maintain that.

Yeah.

Yeah, you see, you see the dwindling muscle as people age. It's the main reason people end up in nursing homes. It's not because they're sick, it's because they can't get up out of a chair.

Right.

And that's because they don't have muscle.

Right. And they fall, they break a hip.

So, let's just back up a little bit for people. What is protein anyway? Like we know fat, we know carbohydrates.

Protein is the black sheep of the macronutrient family.

Yeah.

That is a neglected, right?

Everybody's talking about carbs and fat. Who's talking about protein?

Protein.

We've been talking about it for years. It is essential for the building blocks of everything. Skin, neurotransmitters, hormones. It is ultimately what life is made of. It is the baseline fundamentals. And not only that, it can- and.

By the way, all your genes do, you have 20,000 genes, all they do is make protein.

Correct.

And they make protein out of the building blocks of protein that you eat.

Correct.

And.

Dietary protein is key to getting all of those amino acids. And anyone, you can open up a textbook and look at all the amino acids, they all have different things. I will point out that if you look at the label of any nutritional supplement, it will have a breakdown of carbohydrates, how much fiber, how much sugar, fat. It will have a breakdown of saturated fat, all the other fats, and then you get to protein. And it just has one little line, protein. But not all protein is created equal. You have animal protein and you have plant protein, all of which are are made up of different amounts of amino acids, which affect your body differently. Plant protein and animal protein are totally different. They have different levels of amino acids. Animal protein has the building blocks required for muscle tissue, not to mention bioavailable zinc, B12.

Well, it's interesting. There's a movie coming out called Game Changers. You might have heard about it by James Cameron, where he documents the power of vegan diets for athletic performance and shows world-class Olympic athletes being vegans and actually having massive muscle amounts.

And do you know that's a great point? You know why that is, why that can happen? Muscle is stimulated two ways. Number one, resistance exercise or exercise.

Yeah.

And number two, dietary protein. If you grossly reduce one of those things, which in that crew was dietary protein, their exercise balances that out. You want to age well, the more muscle mass you have in midlife, the better your trajectory of aging.

So what percent of your diet should be protein?

It's a great question. I would say it depends on the amount of calories that you're eating and the lower your caloric intake, the higher your protein percentage because you begin to utilize your muscle for energy. It is very variable.

But should it be 30%, 20%? Easily.

So the recommendation is 50%? The recommendation is 30%. Arguably, I would say it could likely be higher than that.

Do we have to eat meat? Can it be chicken, fish? Can it be plant protein supplemented with amino acids?

It can be all of those things. It's certainly individual. It is absolutely individual. If you are vegan and vegetarian, vegan or vegetarian, or having a lower protein meal, let's say a fish that is 15 grams of protein, add in five grams of branched-chain amino acids. That is certainly a solution to not wanting to eat a higher protein diet.

How do you know if you're not getting a protein? You have sarcopenia, but you go to the doctor.

I measure it.

You do, but What should be doctors be looking at?

You should be tracking skeletal muscle.

They can do.

So there's the gold standard is a DEXA.

DEXA scan is basically like what you use for bone density, but you can measure body composition and fat. So we learned a lot today. We learned that one of the biggest epidemics in the world is not even talked about or diagnosed by your doctor called sarcopenia or muscle loss. We've learned that as we age, we.

Need far more protein than we thought. Easily done.

We've learned that plant proteins, although they can be okay, are inadequate to actually create muscle synthesis and grow muscle, especially as we age. They need to be supplemented so you can actually be a vegan and be healthy without a little extra work.

Yeah, a lot of extra work.

Involves more exercise and more amino acids that people aren't understanding. And, I'm gonna hit the gym and, I'm gonna get my amino acids.

Protein has been a hotly debated topic in the world of nutrition for quite some time. But protein is also essential to good health, as it creates the building blocks for growth and development, and it's also necessary for lean muscle maintenance. Protein is also critical for immune function. Dr. Hyman recommends eating about half your weight in grams of protein per day, or about two 4-ounce servings of organic, clean animal protein for people who eat meat and fish. Plant-based proteins such as legumes, nuts, and seeds also support your immune system. It's important to combine plant-based proteins to get the full spectrum of amino acids. Sometimes you might need a branched-chain amino.

Acid supplement to support muscle maintenance.

And of course, exercise is critical. It's never too late or too early to implement an exercise routine. If you enjoyed this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy, please consider sharing it with.

A friend or leaving us a comment below. Thanks for tuning in.

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