JJ Virgin and a co-speaker argue that aging well requires both adequate protein to preserve muscle and occasional protein-sparing fasts to activate longevity pathways like AMPK. They reject the idea of staying in a low-mTOR state continuously, calling instead for a cyclical approach that balances lean muscle preservation with cellular repair.
I want to connect the dots between inflammation and aging, but I also want to connect the dots in this whole controversy out there of low protein versus optimal protein with aging, because there's still a whole camp out there that thinks that you should not eat much protein, that it will age you.
Yeah, well, I mean, that's centered around a lot of mTOR, right? It's mTOR and the research around mTOR and longevity. Yeah, so I just think we lose the context of real life. We become so hyper-focused on the pathway and don't look at the larger context of it. So I think it's oftentimes a both-and approach even there. There's a time when we want mTOR to be low, right? I think that there's cyclical times of fasting to upregulate these deep mitochondrial, like, mitophagy pathways and decrease mTOR to allow stem cells to be activated and AMPK to be upregulated and all these amazing pro-antioxidant, pro-healthspan pathways. But it's human nature to say, well, if it's cyclical times is good to clean house, right? Time for cellular renewal. Let's, let's always be in that state. And we're going to have diminishing returns of that. And then you have these people that just look completely translucent and pale and feeble. It's like they don't look like a picture of health at all. And they've kind of lost sight on it because they sort of worship the pathway versus looking at the larger context of how to be a vibrant human. And yeah, so I think that we have to be mindful of protein optimization, but yes, have times of fasting as well. So I think that's the art part of science, or science is an art, right? But we become, you know, more is better and it's just one thing. But I think diversity is the spice of life, if you will, when it comes to so many different things, but specifically health. That I think finding times of seasonal pulsed fasting could be hugely beneficial to clean out dead dysfunctional cells and do protein sparing protocols and— limit protein for a time, but long-term I think the data is clear that one of the best things you can do for longevity is maintaining lean muscle mass and making sure we have adequate protein is a significant part of that, not the only part of that, but it's a significant part of it.
