How to Exercise & Eat for Optimal Health & Longevity | Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a Professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. I'm pleased to announce that my new book, which I've been working on for more than five years, is now available for presale purchase. The book is entitled An Operating Manual for the Human Body and within the book you can find, as the name suggests, protocols for everything from how to improve and even optimize your sleep for increasing your motivation and focus for nutrition, that is Specific nutritional guidelines to follow for health and performance as well as exercise, stress control, your oral and gut microbiome, both of which are critical for brain and body health, as well as protocols for creativity and and much more. Within the book you'll also find the scientific basis, that is the mechanisms and specific studies that substantiate these protocols. And the book is designed to be incredibly easy to use such that if you're suffering from a particular pain point in life, such as difficulty sleeping or excess stress or any number of different issues, that you can go to a specific chapter and protocol and begin to resolve that issue. So my goal in writing this book is that it not only be exceptionally practical, but that it also be extremely informative. That is teaching you a lot about the science that under underlies the protocols that can improve your mental health, physical health and performance. To order protocols go to protocolsbook.com and there you will find links to any number of different vendors and you can select the one that you Prefer. Again, that's protocolsbook.com My guest for today's episode is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is a medical doctor who did her clinical and research training at Washington University in St. Louis. She's an expert in geriatrics, in nutrition, in in health and longevity. And during today's episode, Dr. Lyon explains how if we are interested in our immediate and long term health, muscle is the organ that we need to pay attention to. She explains how this is true for everybody, men and women alike, and that there are specific things that we all can and should do with our nutrition and our exercise in order to maximize the health of our muscular tissue. Now, in some cases people will be interested in building more muscle, but it's important to point out that much of today's discussion is simply about improving the health of your muscular tissue and the specific ways to do that in order to support brain health, body health and movement, of course, as well as the health of every organ system in your body, again placing a focus on improving muscular tissue itself as a way to improve all the organ and tissue systems of your body. Dr. Lyon explains the specific science and protocols that can be applied in your everyday life at the level of what you choose to eat or not eat, as well as how much of certain foods to eat or avoid, as well as specific training regimens, most of which take very little time, but they can vastly improve the health of your muscular tissue and therefore the health of your entire brain and body. I'm certain that by the end of today's episode you will have a much more thorough understanding of what you can do to improve your immediate and long term health and thereby potentially your lifespan, all of which are based on the most modern understanding from basic research, from from clinical studies, and from practical application in the real world. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui Venison. Maui Nui venison is the most nutrient dense and delicious red meat available. Now, I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts and with several expert guests on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be seeking to get about 1 gram of high quality protein per pound of body weight every day. Not only does that protein provide critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also for overall metabolism and health. Maui Nui Venison has an extremely high quality protein per calorie ratio so that you can get that 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight easily and without ingesting an excess of calories. Also, Maui Nui venison is absolutely delicious. I love their venison steaks, their ground venison, I love their bone broths, and I love their jerky, which is extremely convenient when you're traveling. Those Maui Nui venison jerky sticks have 10 grams of high quality protein per stick at just 55 calories. While Maui Nui offers the highest quality meat available, their supplies are limited. Responsible management of the axis deer population on the island of Maui means that they will not go beyond harvest capacity, so signing up for a membership is the best way to ensure access to their high quality meat. If you'd like to try Maui Nui venison, you can go to mauinuivenicine.com huberman to get 20% off your membership or first order. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com huberman Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods and activities affect your health by giving you real time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. One of the most important factors in both your short and long term health is your body's ability to manage glucose or what's sometimes called blood sugar, to maintain and energy and focus throughout the day. You want to keep your blood glucose steady without big spikes or crashes. I started using Levels about three years ago as a way to understand how different foods and activities impacted my blood glucose levels and it's proven incredibly informative for me in determining what food choices I make, when to eat and when to time eating relative to workouts, sleep, et cetera. Indeed, using Levels has made it very easy for me to optimize my entire schedule and to understand where the flexibility in that schedule exists so that if I need to move a meal or I need to fast a little bit longer, or if I need to work out fasted or not fasted, all of that can be adjusted while maintaining energy and focus and great sleep at night. If you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a CGM yourself, you can go to Levels Link Huberman Levels just launched a new CGM sensor that is smaller and has even better tracking than the previous version. Right now they're also offering an additional two free months of membership. Again, that's Levels Link Huberman to try the new sensor and two free months of membership. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now, I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that sleep is the foundation for mental health, physical health and performance. Now, one of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is to make sure that you sleep on a mattress designed specifically for your sleep needs. And that's what Helix Sleep mattresses are designed to accomplish. If you go to the Helix website and take a brief two minute quiz, it asks you questions such as do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach do tend to run hot or cold during the night. Maybe, you know, maybe you don't know the answers to those questions. In any case, they'll match you to the ideal mattress for your unique sleep needs. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk Helix mattress. I started sleeping on a dusk mattress about three and a half years ago and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had because it's customized to my unique sleep needs. If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com huberman take that 2 minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that's ideal for your unique sleep needs. Right now giving up to 30% off mattresses and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.comhuberman to get 30% off and two free pillows. And now for my discussion with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, welcome.

Thank you so much.

So great to have you here. You have a tremendous range and depth of expertise. You treat men, you treat women. You know a ton about exercise physiology, nutrition. You've done work in psychiatry, you've done work in geriatrics. You know so very much about how to get healthy and stay healthy. And today we're going to talk about all of that. To kick things off, I would love to dive into your take on this unique aspect of our physiology that most people, when they hear about, think about weight training or maybe bodybuilding or have some immediate reaction to. But you have a different stance on this incredible organ that we call muscle. So if you would just tell us how you look at this thing that we call muscle in men, in women and kids and old people, young people, how should we think about muscle? Muscle?

Well, first of all, muscle is the organ of longevity. And we've always thought about muscle, just as you said, when it comes to exercise performance, mobility and strength, which, by the way, all of those things are important and critical for life. But there's something very unique and special to skeletal muscle. First of all, it's an organ system. It's an endocrine organ. It is responsible for a large component of glucose disposal, roughly 80% of glucose disposal. And we all hear about these things like Cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, largely. Many of these metabolic diseases begin in skeletal muscle decades before.

Interesting.

Skeletal muscle is also an amino acid reservoir. It is the place that your body pulls from amino acids. And that is something that changes as we age, this idea of protein turnover. And we require healthy skeletal muscle. Of course, it's the body armor that we all know and it is really responsible for how we age. And by the way, I came to this understanding through an experience I'd love to share with you. I did my fellowship in geriatrics and nutritional sciences and at the time we were looking at, you know, every fellow has to have a project, lucky for us. And we were looking at body composition, brain function. And there was one patient who I just adored. She was a mom of three kids and she had always yo yo dieted. We imaged her brain and her brain looked like the beginning of an Alzheimer's brain. And I thought to myself, and I felt very responsible thinking, why was this woman who was doing everything that we told her to do, she was exercising, she was eating a low fat, high carbohydrate diet. Why was she so metabolically unhealthy? And I realized that at the end of the day, it wasn't that she was over fat, it was that she was under muscled. And we spend decades and have spent decades trying to treat obesity, when really what we need to be looking at is skeletal muscle.

Super interesting. We know that the brain is among the most metabolically active organs in the body. And muscle too, one of the most metabolically active organs in the body. You'll probably tell me that one is more active than the other. Which one is it?

Muscle's actually quite frankly, not very metabolic. Metabolically active at rest.

Interesting.

For every pound of skeletal muscle, it might at rest burn 10 calories, primarily burns fatty acids at rest.

Okay, I learned something new, and I imagine many other people did as well. So this woman that was overweight, you looked at the problem through a different lens, that she's under muscled. How does one go from being under muscled to properly muscled? And what is that? And as I say this, I realize that many of our listeners probably don't resistance train, or if they do, they may not want to carry a lot of muscle, thinking that that would make them have to buy a new wardrobe. You know, certainly some of our listenership probably wants to gain more muscle. But is.

Or a new wardrobe or a new wardrobe. Yeah.

Is there a way to view increasing muscle mass in a way that is compatible with kind of, I don't know, we call like traditional aesthetics or with overall health in a way that's sort of distinct from quote unquote, bodybuilding? I mean, again, as soon as we talk about muscle, we think about slabs of meat added to different parts of our body. And surely certain people probably want to add muscle to certain parts of their body for aesthetic reasons. But how should we think about muscle in the context of some of the to do's in terms of nutrition and exercise? And we'll segue into that. Again, how should we conceptualize this business of being under muscled and getting To, I guess, what we call appropriately muscled.

I think that that's a. It's a really good point, this idea of being appropriately muscled. So the truth is, I can't tell you how much skeletal muscle mass you should have for optimal health. I don't know how much skeletal muscle mass I should have for optimal health. We haven't done a good job in the literature, and just as a population being able to track skeletal muscle and know what is optimal, we are really good at looking at body fat and we're really looking good at looking at bone. But when it comes to skeletal muscle, DEXA is an extrapolation. So, for example, we use DEXA as the gold standard. And I'm going to come back to what we need to do to gain healthy skeletal muscle. But I think that it's really important to put things into perspective and a framework for how we think about things. We traditionally use dexa. DEXA looks at bone and it looks at lean tissue collectively. Part of lean tissue is skeletal muscle mass. It doesn't determine the health of skeletal muscle mass. It doesn't determine anything about the quality of that tissue. It purely looks at lean tissue, which then we determine part of that lean tissue, maybe it's 40%, is skeletal muscle. And that's important to understand. As we begin to frame up the conversation as how much skeletal muscle should I have? I have no idea. But what I can tell you is that if I were to look at your blood work and I saw something like elevated triglycerides or elevated insulin or elevated glucose, I would begin to understand that the health of your skeletal muscle isn't where it should be. By the way, the health of skeletal muscle mass begins when we're young. This idea of sarcopenia, which for the listener or the viewer, the definition of sarcopenia, by the way, became a disease. It wasn't even classified as a disease till 2016.

Wow.

Yes, wow. Which is very recent for a disease. It is a decrease in muscle mass and function. But interestingly, we don't necessarily know what one should have. So I think it's important to understand that when we're talking about the health of skeletal muscle, we're still pretty much in the infancy of understanding the trajectory of where it is and where it's going. When we think about how we maintain the health of skeletal muscle, one of the things that I didn't mention is that skeletal muscle is a nutrient sensing organ. It is uniquely sensitive to the quality of our diet. The quality of our diet, defined as the quality of the Amino acids that we're gaining. And that would be for the listener, dietary protein. Skeletal muscle is sensitive to one of the amino acids, leucine, and depending on the quality of the diet, meaning how much leucine that you're getting in any given meal will then stimulate muscle health.

Not just muscle size, but muscle health.

Muscle health. And the way that we think about muscle health is by proxy is this concept called muscle protein synthesis, which we can measure. And when we get a dietary protein amount which is between 30 and 50 grams of high quality protein, it stimulates skeletal muscle.

So I love this idea of focusing for a bit on muscle protein health because it divorces us from this conversation, at least temporarily, about muscle size, which I have to imagine is correlated, but it's a separate thing altogether. Actually, I should just ask the question, is it possible for somebody to have a lot of muscle but their muscle health is poor?

Yes.

Okay. Conversely, can somebody have a moderate to low amount of muscle but their muscle quality is high, or is that less common?

Well, the first thing that you said is absolutely something that we see is that in an individual that carries a lot of muscle and say they're inactive, there is a big discussion about how heavy individuals will have more muscle mass. But what we have to recognize is the health of that skeletal muscle is fat deposition, can be visceral fat deposition, fat around the organs. And it can be also fat infiltrate into the tissue, like not to gross anyone out, a marbled steak. And that's exactly what can happen to unhealthy skeletal muscle, which then affects its ability to contract, which also affects there's a ton of mitochondria in skeletal muscle. It affects the efficiency of skeletal muscle. So yes, someone can have potentially more muscle, but more unhealthy muscle.

Interesting. When you say a marbled steak, I think at the extreme, like a wagyu, a raw wagyu looks like there's as much white fat in it as there is red meat in it. And it's a very different taste and texture. So that's what we're talking about. My understanding is those cows don't move around much. They're somewhat sedentary compared to say a free range grass eating cow. Is that right?

Yeah, that's absolutely correct.

Okay, so we want quality, healthy muscle and then we can talk about muscle amount.

And then the other thing that I'll say about it is part of what defines muscle health is that flux, that movement. So if you were to think about skeletal muscle like a suitcase and an individual was say, going on a trip for four days, but chooses to eat or pack for 30 days.

We know these people.

Yes, I know. I may be one of them. I have my suitcase here. I was only coming in for a day, but I may have packed for four days. Not sure what I was doing. But that's besides the point when an individual is overeating calories, overeating carbohydrates. I had mentioned earlier that skeletal muscle, one of its primary roles is glucose disposal. And I'm sure we're going to get in the mechanisms of glucose disposal, whether it's insulin dependent or insulin independent, depending on if someone is moving or contracting that muscle. When an individual is eating food, carbohydrates, it gets stored in skeletal muscle as glycogen, because as we know, glucose at a high level is toxic to the body. So the body must move glucose out of the bloodstream into the cells. Now what happens is, is there becomes this stasis. So if an individual is inactive and not exercising, then that skeletal muscle becomes overpacked. Skeletal muscle at rest burns primarily free fatty acids, which is interesting. Most people think about skeletal muscle as burning carbohydrates, but actually at rest, skeletal muscle burns fatty acids. As you can imagine, when that muscle is full and you are not exercising it, then the substrates have nowhere to go and it remains in the bloodstream. And that would be a sign of unhealthy skeletal muscle, which then loops back to what you see in blood work.

Elevated insulin, elevated blood glucose, elevated free.

Fatty acids, elevated branched chain amino acids. All of these things which again, as skeletal muscle, as the metabolic sink, have nowhere to go.

So I'm starting to get a picture where in order to have healthy muscle, we need to think about the feeding of that muscle, the providing of nutrients to that muscle, that is, as well as the use of that muscle. Maybe let's start with the feeding or the providing of nutrients to that muscle. You mentioned that muscle at rest mainly burns fatty acids. It can store glycogen. How do we know when a muscle is full of glycogen? I mean, there's the visual representation of the muscle seems fuller as opposed to flatter. But these are not specific or these are not precise terms. How much carbohydrate does it take to fill all the muscle of the body with glycogen? And then what sorts of things perhaps deplete that?

I think it's a great question. We know that when we're talking about glycogen, the liver stores glycogen, maybe 100 grams and then skeletal muscle, depending on your size, for example, you might store much more muscle glycogen, whether it's 4 or 500 grams compared to someone who is my size.

And can we do the standard conversion of 4 calories per gram? So if the liver is 400 grams, you know, we could just say, okay, there's about 1600 calories worth of energy there. So if I, if I go out and I do some exercise and burn 1600 calories over time, does that mean that the, the liver is then completely depleted?

So, well, the liver will deplete in through an overnight fast. So the liver's main, the liver maintains blood glucose, so skeletal muscle doesn't maintain blood glucose directly. The way that you would leverage muscle glycogen would be through exercise. The way in which you would deplete muscle glycogen would be through more intensive exercise. And when you think about the foods and the way in which, you know, your original question is, how would we know how much muscle glycogen or how much we need to refuel? I typically think about it as overall activity levels. So if someone is sedentary, then the current recommendation for carbohydrates would be 130 grams per day. Per day.

At 4 calories per gram.

At 4 calories per gram.

And is that both simple and complex carbohydrates, fibrous carbohydrates, yes.

It would just be overall 130 grams.

If they're completely sedentary, yes. So just a little bit of walking, getting up, going to the computer, to the bathroom, to the car, et cetera, but basically sedentary, yes.

And the average American takes in 300 grams of carbohydrates a day, so more than double. And as you can imagine, this can distort metabolism. When we think about glucose disposal, the way in which I think about glucose disposal, if an individual is sedentary, is thinking about how many carbohydrates an individual can ingest at one time. That would mitigate insulin response and would be able to be disposed of safely. And that number is between 40 and 50 grams of carbohydrates at a meal outside of exercise. The rest of carbohydrates would be earned through exercise and through every hour of exercise. Depending on the intensity, that could be between 40 to 70 grams, depending on how intense an individual exercises. And that would be safely disposed of in a two hour period. I mean, when you think about an oral glucose tolerance test, that's a 75 gram load. You assume within two hours that that blood sugar regulation should come back to a normal range.

So at 40 to 50 grams of carbohydrate every two hours, does that mean that if somebody were to eat 40 to 50 grams of carbohydrates every two.

Hours, which they shouldn't.

Which they shouldn't, but because you're quickly exceed that 130 grams per day, and even if exercising with resistance training, say, hard for an hour, which can afford somebody maybe what, another couple hundred, 300.

Grams of carbohydrates, probably not that much.

Okay.

I think that if people care about body composition, which I would say everyone should, because you want to have an appropriate level of body fat and healthy skeletal muscle, then you wouldn't necessarily, unless you're doing some kind of cardiovascular activity, you're not using a ton of muscle glycogen, depending on how much you're training.

And how much glycogen is the brain using?

So that is a good question. The brain uses a lot of carbohydrates. That would be a primary source. When they come up with the numbers of 130, it's really based on brain and then the rest of the body.

Can we safely say that for somebody that's thinking a lot, they need more carbohydrates?

You could say that. Then your brain. Yes, your brain is very metabolically active.

Interesting. So we're kind of drawing rough estimates, not knowing people's body weight, not knowing their body composition. But what I'm arriving at here is, you know, if somebody does a little bit of cardiovascular training, maybe a little bit of light resistance training, I'm describing the activities of many people out there. Maybe 250 grams of carbohydrates. You're kind of at the threshold.

That's a lot.

That's. That's a lot for 4 calories per gram of those carbohydrates. And so let's say 200 grams of carbohydrates per day, but that's not a ton of calories overall. So what should the remainder of the calories be made up of?

So, you know, I think what we're really talking about here is how do we design a nutrition plan for people to have healthy skeletal muscle?

Right.

And, you know, if I were to say, okay, what are we thinking about for the listener or for the people out there? They're thinking, you know, I really want to have a healthy body composition and healthy skeletal muscle mass. The way in which they would do that is, number one, you have to prioritize dietary protein so we're talking about carbohydrates here, but carbohydrates shouldn't be the primary focus. Nobody has challenges getting carbohydrates in 130 grams would be a safe recommendation. If someone is overweight or struggles with type 2 diabetes or any of these other metabolic conditions, there is evidence to support a lower carbohydrate intake.

I mean, 130 grams is, you know, one little micro packet of pretzels on an airplane ride, you know, that actually.

Has probably closer to 37 grams of carbohydrates.

Okay, good.

I had a pretzel packet before, or threw one at Rob on the way in, but no.

Right, okay. So I'm way off there. So they have one of those, a bagel in the morning, and they shouldn't, but they do. And then they have some pasta at dinner. And so most people are probably exceeding that 130 grams by a huge margin.

Yes, they are. And there's a couple things there that it's really important that you said is that individuals, when we're thinking about designing a plan for skeletal muscle health, that first meal is most important. That first meal of the day, having dietary protein will set you up metabolically for the rest of the day.

And when you say first meal, and we'll talk a little bit later about intermittent fasting and, you know, I, for instance, eat my first meal at usually 11am it's just kind of how I'm wired. I've never wanted to eat breakfast first thing. I've forced myself to eat some eggs first thing in the morning from time to time, and it felt fine. But do you recommend that people eat a true breakfast, like within a certain number of hours of waking up for sake of muscle health and metabolic health?

When we think about that first meal, I frankly don't care when you have it. One also has to understand that you're coming out of an overnight fast. If you are young and healthy, then the timing of that first meal likely doesn't matter. Because you are robust. Your body is very efficient and capable to withstand protein degradation. It's able to withstand protein degradation and protein turnover, which is ultimately why we're eating. So that's one reason why we're eating. And we'll talk a little bit more about that, that first meal of the day. If you are young and healthy, the timing doesn't really matter. And I would say when it begins to matter is when you're older, when you are in your 60s. Fat continuing to fast may be a negative, negative for muscle muscle health, that first meal of the day is important because we know that when you get between 40 and 50 grams of protein, that first meal of the day, you stimulate musc protein synthesis. Muscle protein synthesis is by proxy, what we use to measure as a marker for overall muscle health. Now, there's a lot of history here when we think about designing a meal plan. That first meal has between. We'll say give it between 30 to 50 grams of dietary protein. That will do a number of things. Number one, it will stimulate skeletal muscle, what we would consider the health of skeletal muscle. It also will affect the brain. It'll improve satiation. You and I were talking previously. It releases a handful of gut peptides.

Like glucagon, like peptide one, which later.

We'Ll talk about glp pyy things that will affect appetite for that second meal. And there's some very interesting research out of Heather Lydy's lab. And basically, when she put individuals, younger adolescents, on a meal of 30 to 40 grams of protein, they were much less likely to choose, say, donuts or something outside of what we would consider a healthy nutrition plan later in the.

Day or in the same meal later in the day.

It was essentially augmenting their willpower.

Okay, so it sounds like for young people, they can delay breakfast if they want. For older people, probably not. But that the first meal of the day should include what you're calling dietary protein, 30 to 50 grams. And maybe we should talk about the quality of that protein, because I think a lot of people understand that there are meat proteins, there are plant proteins. How important is the quality of that protein?

This tends to be a hot topic and somewhat very controversial.

Great.

Great for you.

I know. Great for everybody. I mean, controversy on this podcast is. Is embraced in the following way. We state what we know, we state what we don't know, and we are always happy to return to the conversation at a future time to adjust any stances based on the data and how we evolve as people.

Okay, well, I love that dietary protein. We speak about it as if it's one thing, but actually it's 20 different amino acids, nine of which are essential. The rest we can generate in our body. And when we think about skeletal muscle, we think about the essential amino acids. And the essential amino acids, primarily for skeletal muscle health are the branched chain amino acids, leucine being one of those. So leucine is uniquely stimulating to skeletal muscle. And when you have enough leucine, it triggers muscle protein synthesis.

And when you say stimulating and muscle protein synthesis I think a lot of people get a picture in their mind of a muscle growing, but you're not necessarily talking about that. You're talking about the organ that is muscle, that its health, its metabolism being cultivated so that it can do all the hormone endocrine related things and the glucose disposal related things that we'll get into in a bit more detail later. Is that right?

Yeah. And so when you have a breakfast of 30 to 50 grams, you appropriately stimulate muscle protein synthesis. And one has to recognize that if you eat below that threshold, you do not stimulate the health of that skeletal muscle. You do not stimulate muscle in a way that would be necessary for outcomes that matter. And outcomes that matter are sarcopenia. Outcomes that matter are body composition, prevention of obesity. You must get this nutrition right. It's the thing that 100% of people do is eat.

As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for more than 10 years now, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. To be clear, I don't take AG1 because they're a sponsor. Rather, they are a sponsor because I take AG1. In fact, I take AG1 once and often twice every single day. And I've done that since starting way back in 2012. There is so much conflicting information out there nowadays about what proper nutrition is. But here's what there seems to be a general consensus on. Whether you're an omnivore, a carnivore, a vegetarian, or a vegan, I think it's generally agreed that you should get most of your food from unprocessed or minimal processed sources, which allows you to eat enough, but not overeat. Get plenty of vitamins and minerals, probiotics and micronutrients that we all need for physical and mental health. Now, I personally am an omnivore and I strive to get most of my food from unprocessed or minimally processed sources. But the reason I still take AG1 once and often twice every day is that it ensures I get all of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, etc. But it also has adaptogens to help me cope with stress. And it's basically a nutritional insurance policy meant to augment, not replace, quality food. So by drinking a serving of AG1 in the morning and again in the afternoon or evening, I cover all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take AG1, report feeling much better in a number of important ways, such as energy levels, digestion, sleep and more. So while many supplements out There are really directed towards obtaining one specific outcome. AG1 is foundational nutrition designed to support all aspects of well being related to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.comhuberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.comhuberman it's great that we're focusing on muscle and then referring to obesity because I think so many people, virtually everybody thinks, okay, reduce body fat, how do you do that? You get the calories in, calories out equation in a certain direction. And by the way, I believe in the law of thermodynamics and calories in, calories out. But by focusing on muscle protein synthesis and muscle health through the ingestion of quality protein early in the day, I see that you're entering this all through it through a different channel, but that the endpoints of reduced body fat, et cetera, as we'll get into later, one can still arrive there. So just for practical purposes, what are some excellent sources of quality protein for that first meal?

Well now the quality of protein is defined by the amino acid composition. And typically animal based proteins have higher quality. These are hard, fast biological numbers. The dietary protein in say a steak is very similar to the protein amino acid in skeletal muscle. So the quality of the proteins, like eggs, like whey protein, like beef, like poultry, those compositions are similar to the human body composition. So they contain the amino acids in the appropriate ratios for skeletal muscle health. Now plant based proteins have a different composition and they have a composition obviously similar to plants. And one can get enough of the essential amino acids if the total caloric load of that protein is high enough. And I think that that's important to recognize because right now the American diet is 70% plant based. And we are, we seem to be moving more towards a plant based diet, is that right? It is.

I mean, I know there's sort of a movement toward that. You hear about plant based. But so most people are not eating steak and eggs for breakfast. We know that.

Well, most people, when I say 70% plant based diet, I'm talking about refined carbohydrates, sugars, cereals, oils. And when we think about it, so that 70% of our diet comes from that where 30% comes from animal based proteins which contain a ton of nutrients like bioavailable zinc and selenium B12. But when it comes to muscle health One could, as long as they are thinking about making sure that the overall protein load is high enough in that plant based protein. For example, one would not choose quinoa as a protein source. So quinoa would. 6 cups of quinoa would equal the same as one small chicken breast when it comes to an amino acid profile. So I think one has to be aware that plant based proteins typically have carbohydrates that ride along with them. And that just becomes important for overall metabolic control. When we think about total caloric load and total carbohydrates. Someone could use a rice pea blend of protein for that first meal. That would certainly be sufficient. Certainly if someone is geared towards a more plant based diet and doesn't want to consume animal proteins, that's what I would use.

Is there any evidence that combining a high quality protein with carbohydrate in that first meal is more or less beneficial than having the protein alone?

That's a good question. I would say that we don't have evidence for that, that it would be more beneficial because the question would be what is the benefit that we're looking for? If the benefit that one is looking for is diversity, then certainly because we know carbohydrates can have fiber, phytonutrients, if you're going to combine it with berries, that could certainly be advantageous but not necessary. What becomes interesting is when we think about designing a diet, does that second meal matter? And not to get too technical, but maybe I'll we could get a little technical here is that when you stimulate muscle protein synthesis, that will last about two to three hours. Now the next thing one would think is, well, I know that I need a certain amount of protein for overall muscle health. The amount of protein for overall muscle health could be anywhere from one gram per pound, ideal body weight to lower. And when we think about how we are designing a diet, we have to recognize that the current recommendations are the minimum to prevent a deficiency. The way in which diets are designed to now according to the RDA is 0.8 grams per kilogram.

0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

Which comes out total body weight. Yes, which comes out to be 0.37 grams per pound. So if someone was 115 pound female, that current RDA would be 45 grams.

Of protein, way below what we talked about earlier.

And this is, these are very important concepts to understand the foundations of how we think about dietary protein. The current rda, which is a minimum to prevent a deficiency, is based on Nitrogen balance. Nitrogen balance. And by the way, the recommendations for protein that were set in the 80s have not changed, which means one of two things. We haven't had new science come out or we just haven't recognized the importance of protein. And I think that it's more likely the latter that we have not yet recognized, even though there's a plethora of data. And I worked on some of these earlier studies, which, you know, I'll share. I even brought the numbers to make sure that I said them right because, you know, this is the Huberman Lab podcast.

Well, I've, I've made, I've made numerical errors before on the podcast, but great that you brought the numbers. We always try and correct any errors, but great to be precise the first time. So thank you.

So, you know, when we think about how we design a diet for optimal muscle health is very different than how we design a diet for, again, just life. And the two are very different. The RDA for leucine, which is that essential amino acid, meaning we cannot make it, we must get it from the diet, is set at 2.7 grams per day.

That's a trivial amount.

That is a trivial amount and 2.7 grams per day per day. And one must understand that this came from nitrogen balance studies. And typically those are young men, 18 year old men, that does not support healthy aging or anyone that is struggling with obesity or any kind of chronic illness or anything. And so then when we begin to think, well, what do we actually need? The evidence would support 2 to 3 times that amount, closer to 9 grams of leucine per day.

And just to calibrate us, 9 grams of leucine, which again is essential amino acid, we can only get from food per day. What does that equate to in terms of the total amount of, let's say egg or steak protein that one would need to eat in order to ensure that. Just rough, roughly.

Yes, wonderful question. So there's a meal threshold for skeletal muscle health and that meal threshold is a minimum of 30 grams. Now that would equal a four, four and a half ounce steak, dare I say six eggs, which is a lot of eggs at one time, or a scoop of whey protein. Scoop of whey protein might have 18 grams of protein and 2 1/2 grams of leucine. Maybe you do a 25 gram whey protein shake and that becomes important to understand because it is a meal threshold amount. You know, we are talking about. You know, the reason why I was so excited to come on this podcast is because I Think that if we can correct our nutrition and we gear it towards skeletal muscle health, then we can change the trajectory of aging and we can stop focusing on obesity and really focus on skeletal muscle health. But the only way that we're going to do that is if we get this nutrition right. Because skeletal muscle requires dietary protein. There's only two main ways that we can stimulate skeletal muscle, and that is through exercise, primarily resistance training and dietary protein. And so when we think about how we design a diet, if you look back at the history, we have to recognize a handful of things. Number one, that these essential amino acids, primarily leucine, is necessary to trigger muscle protein synthesis. Number one. Number two, that aging impairs the efficiency of muscle protein synthesis.

I see. So it's a runaway train if you start getting sarcopenia, if there's obesity and other markers of aging. I realize obesity can occur at young ages, too, but muscle loss, then basically you're losing muscle quality, AKA protein synthesis and other things. And as a consequence, it makes it harder to increase muscle quality. So you have to short circuit this pretty early.

Yes, and I would even say that we talk about sarcopenia as a disease of aging, but I think that there is a youthful phenotype of sarcopenia. If we define sarcopenia as decreased muscle mass and strength, that can easily affect our youth. You know, we talk about health span, we talk about lifespan. There's also muscle span. And muscle span is this concept that is really about the skeletal muscle health as we age. And there's three primary components to that. That's understanding that skeletal muscle health begins very early on. And we're going to talk about, because I know that there's parents, I have two little kids, so I want to talk about the amount of protein necessary for children, of course. And then as we think about this muscle span, there is early on, early age, where you're laying down the foundation, where you're hopefully training, doing exercise, just doing movement. Being sedentary is a disease state in and of itself, Period. End of story. Being sedentary is not the opposite of activity. Being sedentary is, in and of itself, a disease of inactivity. Then midlife, we have to maintain the tissue. We get a peak muscle mass. In our 30s, we get a peak bone mass around the same time. And then that later half of life, we have to do everything that we can to maintain that tissue because of this decrease in efficiency of skeletal muscle. So skeletal muscle, as a nutrient sensing organ, can respond like youthful tissue and the way that it Responds like youthful tissue. From an amino acid perspective, just thinking about how we eat to maintain that is that when we increase our dietary protein, so older individuals or individual as they age require more protein to then stimulate MTOR.

So does that mean instead of eating 30 grams of protein per meal minimum, that people older than say 50, 60 should eat 40 or 50 grams of protein?

I would say that that's true.

Interesting.

And by the way, skeletal muscle will mount a youthful response. There's, you know, this was, the initial work was out of Bob Wolf's lab. He's an icon in the industry of protein. He's one of the, can I say grandfathers now, I mean, that's pretty embarrassing. And when I think about Bob Wolf and Don Layman and these guys, you know, I trained with Dr. Donald Layman, you know, these initial studies that we think about and we take for granted dietary protein, we think, okay, well, the bros have always known this, but we have not. And when you are younger, there is a somewhat of a linear response. Let's say a younger individual still growing, we'll just call them 10, 12 years old, or my children, I have a three and a four and a half year old. They will respond with five grams of dietary protein, 10 grams of dietary protein, 15 grams of dietary protein versus an older individual will not respond at all to that. However, that response can be augmented by increasing the dietary protein at that meal. So an older individual will respond like a younger individual by 30 grams of protein. 30 to 50 later.

We're going to talk about supplements, but I'm very curious. Is there a place for supplementing leucine and other branched chain amino acids specifically? I always assumed that supplementing with branched chain amino acids was kind of the unique domain of people post exercise trying to build more muscle. But as you're telling me all this, it seems that adding leucine in powder form to a meal seems like it would be great for muscle health. Is that true?

I would say that we do not add leucine alone because leucine, isoleucine and valine go hand in hand. It would not be advisable to add a single amino acid. The amino acid levels are maintained in the blood. By adding more of one would have effects on the other side. The way in which I would think about supplementing essential amino acids and or branch chains would be if an individual is choosing to have a lower protein meal. I remember when I was in residency, the food choices were not very good. And Maybe I had 2 ounces of fish, which wasn't Enough to bring me up to a threshold. That would be a place that I would add in branched chain amino acids or essential amino acids that would bring someone's amino acid threshold up. But we have to understand everything that we're doing, we should be doing with a purpose. The idea of just sipping on branched chain amino acids or just adding amino acids would be the equivalent of putting a key into a car and trying to turn the car on, but not having any additional substrate. So you need the full spectrum of all the amino acids to affect skeletal muscle health.

Well, that's reassuring to hear because I love the taste of scrambled eggs and steaks and I also like tuna and I also like chicken and I love all those things. And I have to imagine that as you mentioned before, there are other things in these quality animal proteins, like you mentioned selenium, you mentioned other perhaps essential fatty acids and other vitamins that perhaps have something to do with what the animal ingested during its life that also benefit muscle. Is that true?

It is. And the big standout to me is creatine. We know that creatine at 5 grams of creatine will affect skeletal muscle, but 12 grams of creatine affects brain health. And there's a lot of interesting research coming out on creatine and brain health.

Can you remind me the rough amounts of creatine and say you mentioned. Let's just. I mean, I must say a four and a half ounce steak feels rather poultry to me. That's probably the size of it. Yeah.

Which is a huge meal to me.

Right. So let's say six ounce, let's be generous, a six ounce steak or four scrambled eggs. I mean, how much creatine are we talking? Eggs don't have much creatine, right?

Not much. And I was just recently looking at this. The amount of creatine in a pound of steak you're going to cringe is something like 2 grams.

So it's not very much.

It's not very much. But when we think about eating foods as in a food matrix, what you're saying is absolutely true, that it's interesting. We don't eat single nutrients while we think about dietary protein as a single nutrient and we think about carbohydrates, but what we really do is we eat mixed meals. And when we think about that, the, the quality of the protein matters. From a protein perspective, could you get plant based proteins and animal based proteins and could it be equal? Yes, it could. So I want to be very clear to say and have a very balanced perspective that we could get all of our dietary protein from plants, from plant based sources. A few caveats there is that that RDA that I gave you earlier is based only on high quality proteins and that being the minimum to prevent a deficiency. If an individual was plant based, they would require closer to 1.6 grams per kilogram, a higher amount of total protein if it's coming from plants. And that that becomes important to understand.

Speaking of an ideal world, if you had a magic wand.

I do.

What would be the.

My kids think I do.

I bet you do. What would be the amount of protein that you would have everybody eat in terms of a number of grams per pound or kilogram of body weight?

That's actually an easy question. One gram per pound. Ideal body weight.

Total body weight, not ideal body weight.

Actually where you want to be. If an individual is £200, but would prefer to be £150, then I would have them eat towards their ideal body weight. There's no evidence that a higher protein diet is detrimental to kidney health, to bone health. And we use these terms loosely like a high protein diet, when we have to recognize that 0.8 grams per kilogram is a low protein diet.

So where did the idea come from that if you eat say 1 gram of quality protein per pound of ideal body weight that you're going to get gout, you're going to have liver issues, you're going to have all sorts of issues. Where did that idea come come from?

Frankly, I'm not, I'm not sure. But the conversation around dietary protein has probably been the most controversial.

Why do you think that is? I mean, we don't, I'm, we're not trying to get political here. I'm just so curious.

Some ideas, but I, I won't share them, but I, I do feel as if nutrition is not just science. Nutrition is complicated because it's something that, that people tie emotion to, they tie religion to, they. There's a lot that goes into dietary protein and food recommendations in general.

But it sounds like we can safely say that if you eat one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight, that you're not going to cause liver damage or get gout or increase your risk of cancer. Right. My understanding is that even if it comes from red meat, there's no increase in risk of cancer. Is that right?

Well, here's what I would say to that. I would say that this idea about red meat and cancer, number one, we would have to even define what kind of cancers that we're talking about. There's many different types of cancers and there's many different causes. It would be important to understand what risk factors are. And a primary risk factor to many cancers is obesity. The question then becomes, how do we design a diet that mitigates obesity? The evidence is also very clear that a more protein forward diet optimizes body composition. And you combine that with resistance training and you will see a tremendous amount of change. I worked on some of these early studies and I'll share with you some of the early studies. And this came out of Don Layman's lab with the University of Illinois.

Both you and Lane Norton both worked there.

Yes.

Did you overlap them?

We did. And while he was.

What was he like? No, I'm just kidding.

So let's just say he sat in the back of the class and I sat down the front.

Okay. All right. There you heard it.

Shots fired and all. Kidding. Side. Lane is a very. He's like my brother. We've known each other for 20 some.

Years and he's a very popular guest, former guest on this podcast and a very spirited guy.

And I'd like. I just like to say I don't know why his skin looks that good, but whatever. So I love you, Lane. I worked on. Yes, we do. I worked on some of these early studies. And this was. These studies were some of the first studies to come out about dietary protein nutrition and resistance training. In fact, to my knowledge and to, I think, the knowledge of many of my colleagues, this was the first study. And what it was, it was a. It was a 12 month study. 130 overweight men and women. So it was robust. And basically what they did is they had two groups. One group was a food guide pyramid diet. So it was 55 grams of carbohydrates, a RDA of protein, which was 0.8 grams per kilogram and 30 fat. 30 fat was in both groups. The second group was 40 carbohydrates. This is, remember the zone diet. 40, 30, 30.

Yeah, I liked that diet.

Okay. I mean, there's evidence.

I mean, I don't follow it anymore, but, you know, I tried it for a little while and, and it works great.

And there's some evidence to support that. That is a great ratio.

For people coming off the low fat era of the late 90s, the zone diet felt like the best thing ever because it was like, oh, you know, you can enjoy some fats and wow, your satiety is improved and you get stronger. You just feel better when you're ingesting some ideally quality fats. That's my experience.

And also we know that it influences hormonal status. You don't wanna push fats too low. So the second group had a 40, 30, 30 split. So it was 40 grams of carbohydrates, 30 grams of protein, 30 grams or 30% fat. So these are all percentages.

Yeah, 40, 30, 40%.

Now we didn't talk so much about the distribution, but what is really important to understand is they were isocaloric, so they both had the same calories. The difference was the percentage of where the calories came from and how they were given. And there was actually four different arms to this. So there was individuals that exercised and individuals that didn't.

Okay, so either zone diet, or let's call it, I hate to say this, but more standard American diet.

And that's how it was designed.

Standard American versus zone diet.

So it was designed that way and.

Then exercising or non exercising for each of the.

For this 12 month study. And by the way, I had to pack a bunch of meals. It was not pretty and I had to do urine analysis. It was terrible. But anyway, that's besides the point. So the first group had a protein distribution of 10 grams in the morning, 15 at lunch and 45 at dinner.

Kind of standard American diet. Steak for dinner.

Exactly, yeah.

Some cereal for breakfast with a little bit of milk. And then for lunch. Like a sandwich.

Exactly. And so this mirrors what people do. The other group had 45 grams of protein at that first meal.

6, 5, 6 eggs.

5, 6 eggs. 35 grams of protein at lunch and 35 grams of protein.

Chicken breast in a salad at lunch with a little piece of toast. And then at dinner, how much?

It was 35 grams.

All right, a piece of fish and some rice and a vegetable.

But it was an even distribution. So what you're seeing here is now these meals are meeting a leucine threshold of muscle protein.