The Protein LIE and Why Amino Acids and Creatine Matter More

We're doing everything right as midlife women. We're eating enough protein, or we're trying to. We're lifting weights, we're staying consistent, and we are still losing muscle, or being told that we might lose muscle. Something is off, and today I finally have the answer for you. So here's the thing: we can be eating plenty of protein and still getting the muscle-building signal that we think we are, but then there's this whole idea of we're not really getting it in, it's not working, we're not necessarily absorbing it all and utilizing it all. And then there's this whole creatine conversation because you've been seeing that everywhere. I know I have too, and wondering, is this actually for us, or is it just for people in the fitness industry or bodybuilders? We're going to be answering that today. I personally do take both. I take aminos to help me with my protein and recovery. I also do take creatine. So today I have the perfect guest. I've got Angelo Chieli. He's the CEO and co-founder of Kion, and he works directly with the top scientists in protein and amino acid research. And he was on the show before, and I had to bring him back because this stuff is important, and he's got some answers for us. So welcome back, Angelo.

Thanks for having me back, Natalie.

I've got so many questions, and I know my listeners do too. And I really want to— I want to start with this idea, the idea of this obsession with protein. It's become this really hot topic lately, and I see women obsessing over protein the way that we used to obsess over calorie counting or fat grams. What's going on? Do we need to be tracking protein? Do we need to be having chicken at every meal? Help us with What's happening here?

Protein is really important. And it's— I get what you're saying. Like, at one time we're obsessed with calories and then it's, is it low carb or high carb? Like, what's the right solution? And there's all these different marketing trends in nutrition and people that can make money by telling different stories or selling different products. And so it's kind of hard to keep track of what's actually real versus what's just hot in the moment. What I would say is that in the protein craze, there is, there is a lot of truth. You know, I don't think it's not everything you're hearing is truthful, but there's a lot of truth in it. And I think here's kind of the big idea behind it. When we eat food, we need to get micronutrients from it. Like we want to be able to get vitamins and minerals and all of these are really key for our body. Once you get past them, you have these macronutrients, carbohydrates and fat and protein. And the reason why we eat carbohydrates is really primarily for energy. Like literally, it's like we convert it almost like it's, uh, gasoline that we put in our car. And fat is similar, but it also goes into helping build our cells. But it's, it's also really like an energy source. Protein is really different. So the idea of wanting to focus on protein because it does something different and unique for us is well justified. What protein does when we eat it is it literally rebuilds the proteins in our body. So I think lots of times people think about like your muscle has something maybe to do with protein, Well, all of your muscle is made up of proteins, but so is half of your bone mass. So is your hormones. All of your hormones are made up of proteins, your enzymes, your hair, your skin, your nails, your vital organs, things like your kidney and your liver and your heart. All these are actually made up of proteins. And the way that protein just functions in nature in general, but also in our bodies, is that it doesn't last forever. It starts to break down over time. So for example, every single day, your muscle, the muscle in your body, 1 to 2% of it, the proteins that make it up break down and they have to be replaced. Otherwise you will lose that muscle. Like you have to eat new protein and that protein has to get digested and go into your bloodstream and go into helping rebuild that muscle, or you will, you will lose muscle over time. But maybe even a greater number, which is kind of mind-blowing, is The proteins associated with your liver, 30% of them break down and have to be replaced every day. So this idea of like, "Ah, you got to make sure you eat enough protein or else you're going to, you know, you're going to have issues with your hair, your skin, or your nails, or organs, or your muscle," it is real. Like that is a very real fundamental idea. And there is truth to the fact that for many years, and certain populations don't eat enough protein to live optimally, to have the best hair, to have the best skin, to build and maintain muscle, to age really well, to have a toned, lean body, to minimize the body fat you have because you've really built more muscle that helps improve your metabolism. All these— like, this is real. Um, so it is important. And that's, that's my— that's the long answer to a relatively simple question.

So it's not a myth story, it's, it's real. Is there this magic amount? Like, you see some people talking about you must eat exactly your body weight in grams, or you'll hear that that's, that's maybe excessive. What is your thought on that?

So this one, it gets— it's a little bit more nuanced. It depends on your age, your activity levels, and any other things that maybe you're going through in life. So what I'll say is that the most kind of basic fundamental level, if you are a young— in your 20s and you're relatively healthy, but you're not like trying to be super strong or compete as an athlete, I would say that generally about 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight is totally sufficient. Like if you weighed 100 pounds, which not many people weigh that little, but if you did, that'd be like 70 grams of protein per day. Like that, that's plenty. Now, as soon as you get out of that group of these kind of young, moderately active people, it changes. And here's why. When your body undergoes stress and that stress could be really intense training and you want to be able to build and maintain muscle. And that could be as like endurance training. Like you just want to be a really awesome runner. Um, actually having enough protein to support all the stress from that running is really important. But another thing would be like, and obviously if you're doing weight training, but another thing is actually just aging. It's, uh, I think people don't often realize that aging itself is what scientists call a, like a stress-based physiology. It's a form of the body being in a more stressed state. It's not at its most vibrant 20-year-old state. Like things are kind of breaking down. They're not working quite as well. And so what happens is as we get older, our body doesn't respond to the amino acids, which we'll get more into, that are inside the protein to help us rebuild our skin, to help us rebuild our muscle, our hair, our hormones. And so actually, slightly more amounts of protein are going to be beneficial the older we get. So there's not perfect guidelines for this, and every single body is different, you know, but it's like, in your 30s, maybe it's like 0.8 grams. By the time you're 40, maybe it's 0.9. You know, it's creeping up over time to where a little bit more protein as a portion of your total calories is going to provide more benefit because you're, you're actually not getting as much out of the protein that you used to.

So this is a little bit misleading to people because they think, I'm getting older, maybe I'm less active, and they think they've already built the muscle, so they need less. And you're saying it's actually the opposite because you're not being as efficient with it too?

You're not being as efficient. Yeah. And we can, we'll get a little more, a little bit more into like how that works. Like, what does it mean to not be efficient? But in the simplest terms, when the same person, when you're 25 years old and you eat 20 grams of protein from some chicken, you are literally getting more from that than when you're 45 years old, that same person eating that same 20 grams of protein. Yeah. You're, it's just not as, it's not stimulating as much protein synthesis. And that's because, and when protein synthesis is not this, it's not, it sounds like fancy, it's like some scientific thing. It just means like synthesize means to build, to create, right? Like when your body eats the protein, it doesn't think, "Oh, I need to use this to actually replace old skin cells. I need to use this to replace old proteins involved with my muscle." It just doesn't— it's not as sensitive to it.

So yeah, you actually need more. One of the things I've shared many times is about digestive enzymes and how we don't have that same amount of— we don't have the enzymes in our stomach after age 35, and so we're not breaking it down efficiently. So one of the things I've I've had my audience do is add digestive enzymes, especially in midlife. But you're talking about something different. So that's like a whole separate thing. So we've got a couple issues with protein. So you've got the— are we digesting it and breaking it down? But then you're also talking about protein synthesis, which is a whole different conversation, it sounds like.

It is a different conversation, yeah. And the reasons— it is valid. It is— again, there's truth to that. There's validity to the idea that as you get older, like, your digestive enzymes don't work as well as they used to. So you're not breaking down the protein as well, breaking down all types of foods as well. But the real reason why the protein is not as effective is not because of that. It is because your body's sensitivity to these amino acids— and this might be a good time to just kind of describe that and explain that. Just one more thing I want to say though, another really important kind of, quote, stress-based physiology, this kind of stress form of why you might not use protein as well, is any type of dieting. If you are in a caloric deficit, you need significantly more protein or significantly more amino acids, essential amino acids, than you do if you, if you aren't in a caloric deficit. And that's really hard because lots of times people dieting either through, you know, using MyFitnessPal and using a coach and tracking what you're eating, or, uh, just choosing lower calorie, eating lots of vegetables and fiber and things like that, or going on a medication like a GLP-1. In any of these cases, it becomes that much harder to eat as much protein, right? Because you're eating less, you need to eat an even greater percentage of your total diet needs to be protein or amino acids in order to maintain muscle and be productive.

This has been one of the big concerns in the GLP conversation is because people don't have an appetite. So even though they're hearing, "I need to eat protein," they're not hungry and then they're definitely not getting that 0.75 grams.

Right.

Or even— Yeah.

And as you get— and again, you need a lot more than the 0.75 grams. Actually, last tangent on this before we get to like what the heck are these amino acid things I'm talking about are— Recent studies in the last few years, and these are actually sponsored by, uh, the Department of Defense, it's that— this is actually even looking at younger, um, people, so it's not like looking at middle-aged folks, which are going to be even more susceptible to this. A 30% caloric deficit— so you need 2,000 calories a day and you cut 600 calories out, which is aggressive, but it's not like, it's not like crazy aggressive— you need 3 times the amount of amino acids per serving. To not lose muscle. So that's like the equivalent of 3 times the amount of protein.

Wow.

Like it's an enormous amount of increase in total protein intake if you want to ensure that you're only losing fat and not losing muscle. So yeah, you go on a GLP-1 and you're like not being super thoughtful about what that means and your appetite just goes down dramatically. It's like you have to be thinking very— you really have to add this additional thought pattern of like, I need to be eating a lot more protein or I need to be supplementing. And this, we'll get into like, this is an amazing role that essential amino acids can play as a supplement in someone's life. But like, you really got to be thinking about that. Okay. So, all right. Segue back to what, what are essential amino acids and how does this work?

So, and also when you do that, I also, I want to, I don't want to skip this part because I think most people don't truly understand what happens inside the body. Like when you, you have protein, like what is that process? If you could share that too, and then we'll talk, I want to talk about aminos.

Okay, great. Yeah. So that I'll use that as the entry point into describing You know, what, what these aminos are. So when you eat protein as a food, and let's just, we'll give different examples. That could be chicken. Okay. That could be steak. That could be, there's protein in plant proteins, like quinoa, uh, tofu, uh, spirulina even has protein. Like all these things have proteins in it. What I'll name is that all those different food sources, the proteins in them are a little different. If you think about it, maybe like each one of them, proteins are like these these bricks that help build up parts of our body. Well, in the same way, they're little bricks that help build up the chicken, they're bricks that help build up the, the quinoa structure. They're different. They're like, if you think about bricks that make up houses, some are red bricks, some are small, some are big, some are these huge gigantic bricks like in a big commercial building. So they're, they're different. And when we eat them, we digest them, and some are easier to digest than others. So one of the benefits— it's not saying that they're better across the board for everything, I'm just saying animal proteins are more easily digestible. So an animal protein is actually— the enzymes in our body have an easier time breaking them apart. And when we break apart these proteins, but they also break apart the proteins in quinoa or rice or, you know, wheat, what happens is you get the little tiny grains of sand that make up those bricks, and those are called amino acids. And there's 20 dietary amino acids that are the little tiny individual grains of sand ingredients that build up these bigger proteins that make up chicken breast and, and quinoa and beans, etc. And we then take those amino acids— our body does— and it sends them into the blood, and then they get distributed throughout the body. But the way that the protein really works as a, um, as a nutritional stimulus to protein synthesis, to like telling our body to build new proteins, is Really how many essential amino acids in a really high concentration go into the blood. So if you think about it like this, when you eat chicken breast, um, not all of it is protein. There's, there's water, there's carbohydrates, there's some fat, and then there's some protein in it. And in that protein, only a portion of it are, is like the little grains of sand are these essential amino acids. And chicken breast is pretty high quality. It's about 40 to 45% of the chicken protein are these essential amino acids. The other 55% are non-essential. And non-essential and essential, there's kind of two ways of thinking about it. One is essential just means like the idea of essential means that you have to eat it. If you don't eat it, you'll die. And also, uh, your body cannot make it. So these essential amino acids, your body can actually take them and it can create the non-essential amino acids. So that's one important part of the idea, but the much more interesting thing that really, I would say, has become— we've only become aware of that, how important this is in the last 20 years, is the essential amino acids are actually this chemical messenger. So the essential amino acids in chicken, when you digest it and it goes into your blood, the more that you have of them all at once in the blood communicates to the body that it is safe basically to break down older, not as effective proteins. Like, ah, there's these older liver proteins I don't need, so now I can rebuild them because I've got this strong signal of this like core concentrated component that I need. Like, I need these essential amino acids in order to rebuild my liver proteins, in order to rebuild my muscle, etc. And so the more that you have of them all at once, the bigger the signal and the more protein synthesis you're going to get.

So again, what is happening with the, the non-essential protein? What is the— what is that doing?

So the non-essential amino acids, a certain portion of them are getting used as the building blocks. So if you think about it this way, the essential amino acids are both like the workers They're like, like, they're like the— if you think about your house, if you think about your body is like a house and it's made up of proteins and you need to redo the entryway to your house, right? There's workers that are going to come in and they're going to demolish stuff and they're going to help build the new stuff. And there's materials, there's like bricks and new flooring, et cetera. So the essential amino acids play both roles. They're the workers that kind of stimulate the process and they become some of the bricks that go into it. The nonessential amino acids are only the materials portion of them gets used to become part of the new liver protein tissue, to become part of the new muscle, to become part of your hair. That said, you don't need all of them. Like, with the amount of non-essential amino acids that we just get in our food when we eat it, when we eat even a high-quality protein like chicken, you don't need that amount of non-essential amino acids to help rebuild the proteins in your body. And so some of them get converted into via— this is a kind of fancy word, but gluconeogenesis— they get converted into sugar, actually. They get converted into carbs and they become some energy that you use. And then you also pee some out via urea. So in short, the nonessential amino acids, some of them actually become your new muscle tissue. They become your skin, they become your hair, and some of them get converted into a form of like a sugar that you burn as energy.

So when you've said before to me that this is actually— when you have aminos, especially like Kion aminos, you're actually getting a better quality of protein than actually just trying to eat protein. That's what you meant, is because it— if I'm hearing that correctly, because you're getting only the essential part, you're getting the more usable.

That is, that is a big, that is a big part of it. And I'll give you a, I'll give you a comparison of different protein sources, and at the very end you'll get the pinnacle of like why something like an essential, a leucine-enriched essential amino acid supplement like Kion Aminos is so much more impactful.

Okay.

So, and this is all based off of published research. If you look at the International Society of Sports Nutrition position paper on amino acids, like all this document, you can see these graphs, et cetera. But basically if you consume, uh, 30 grams of beef protein, which is approximately what you get from like a 6-ounce steak.

Yep.

Okay. It, you digest it, you break down the protein, you break down the amino acids. There's a portion of that— actually, it ends up being about 12% of that total steak is essential amino acids.

Really?

Yeah, because a lot of it's water, and then it's not all protein, and then of the final protein, only 45% is essential amino acids. But about 12% is essential amino acids. You digest it and it goes into your bloodstream. It stimulates, so it communicates to the body to rebuild these proteins more than if you ate twice that amount of beef protein. If you ate 70 grams of beef protein as part of a mixed meal. So if you had a 12-ounce steak, but you ate it with broccoli and potatoes and other great food, which I endorse, like that's— I mean, I don't necessarily eat that big of a serving of steak all at once, but like I eat like whole food quality meals. And I would encourage everyone to do that because there's good micronutrients. You actually get just as much and more stimulus from eating half the amount of steak if you eat it on its own. Why is that?

Wait, I want to make sure I'm following this. So you're saying if you eat it with other things, you're going to get more than if you eat it— Less. You're going to get less than if you eat it by itself.

Yeah. So I'll just say this, 12-ounce, abbreviating the science. And then like, you know, there's specific measurements like 70 grams versus 30, but basically approximately a 12-ounce steak eaten with broccoli and potatoes has been shown to produce less stimulus of this protein synthesis than eating half that amount of steak, 6 ounces of steak on its own.

Why?

The reason for that is because the thing that communicates to the body that, hey, let's break down these old proteins, let's build new ones, is the concentration of essential amino acids in the blood all at once. And when you eat it as part of this mixed meal, you slow down the digestion, you slow down the amount of the essential amino acids that hit all at one time. So it's a slower drip into the body, and you don't get this kind of peak concentration of the essential amino acids. That doesn't mean it's not good, and that doesn't mean that you, you need to rely purely on nutrition for stimulating protein synthesis. Because, for example, just training does that. When you lift weights, you tell the body like, hey, I want to break down these old proteins and make new ones. Any type of exercise does that. But there is a unique opportunity to do it with food. Food on its own actually is Protein on its own can be a stimulus.

So if you didn't— and I know we're going to talk a lot about aminos in a minute, and we still have our creatine too— but if you didn't have aminos, like that's— it was not an option, you didn't create Kion, um, and you knew this, would you then be eating your meat by itself and then eat your vegetables and your other stuff after to try to force that?

I think maybe for snacks, you know. I think that— I think it's really— I'm a pretty like minimalist person. I try to figure out how to make things really easy for myself because I think adherence is more important than being perfect. Like I can design the perfect eating plan and the perfect training plan. If I don't do it, like it doesn't, it doesn't work. But what I would say, it's like if I'm trying to fit in a snack and get a little bit more protein in, I might have like, you know, just Greek yogurt on its own.

Got it.

Right. Or maybe like a little bit of berries with it or a little bit of fruit, which are going to be very quick and easy to digest versus a bunch of other food mass with it. I don't think I'm going to try to like, it's not like at dinnertime, I'm going to be like, I'm going to only eat my steak. And then I'm going to wait 2 hours and then I eat my broccoli and eat my potatoes. I would just like have a nice—

not like a 5-minute wait. It's like you have to wait literally.

Yeah, you have to wait a while.

Yeah.

And it's like your life becomes managing this, you know, it's kind of— yeah, diet obsession thing. Whereas really, I mean, all this stuff should be about making your life more awesome, right? Where it's like you feel better in your body, you get to enjoy time with your family, you feel fit, you know, like you do all these things. So I don't want to be like that kind of broken down. But I would say, yeah, I would for like snacks. And I do that sometimes if I'm having snacks and I'm not using a supplement as a snack, which I do use supplements a lot as snacks because they're more effective, which we'll get to like now. Yeah, I might eat like only some beef jerky. But so here's the really interesting comparison. If you compare that to a whey protein powder, because the whey protein powder is even more separated from other things, like even in a steak, right? It's still all tied up with some carbohydrates, fat. With fat, with minerals, with all these other things tied up. Like, the whey protein is much more easily digestible protein. Gram for gram, whey protein powder stimulates about 3 times the amount as like a steak does. So a protein powder, a whey protein powder specifically— it's, it's different if you start talking about plant protein powders or, or like a collagen or anything like that. It's very different. But a whey protein powder is about 3 times as effective as literally just steak. And that is because it is, again, already— it's based in the simplest terms, it's more bioavailable. When you eat it, it just more quickly gets into your blood. The essential amino acids in it more quickly get into your blood. It also has a slightly higher concentration of essential amino acids compared to some other proteins. It has a higher amount of leucine. Like, it's a, it's a slightly more kind of ideal proportions, but really it's because it's digested so quickly.

Can't believe it's taken me 54 years to have this light bulb moment. But for years, I've spoken about, like, especially from my fitness days, I would talk about whey when you're trying to put muscle on, especially for bodybuilders, your fitness competitors, because it's so much quicker absorbed. I would say that, but I didn't fully understand until you just explained that why.

Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. It really, it's more impactful. And that doesn't mean though, well, stop eating whole food and just drink shakes all day. It's just, but that's the reason why, huh, if I'm going to have one more snack, If I'm already having, I don't know, like I try to eat pretty honestly for breakfast, I'm having like vegetables and eggs. Yeah. So it's like, I already had vegetables and eggs and now it's like my snack later on, rather than just trying to eat protein, like a little bit of a protein shake is actually going to do more for me than trying to eat beef jerky necessarily. So it's like, I use it more in that kind of way. But now if you compare it to essential amino acids, the essential amino acids, and this is for a young adult, and then we're going to get to like, we'll get to what happens if you're, you know, over 40. Or if you are undergoing any kind of stress, basically, that could be dieting, it could be intense performance goals, et cetera. The essential amino acids are about 3 times as effective as the whey protein gram for gram. And the reason for that is very simple. It's the same reason why the whey is better than the meat. It's that it's more easily digestible. Like it's, there's nothing tied up with it. It's just, you're just taking the raw essential amino acids. But the second part of it is that the essential amino acids are also 100% of the— of what you're taking. With the whey protein powder, it's still only about less than half. It's like 45% is the essential amino acids. So the essential— like when I take a Kion Aminos, it's— I'm just taking the essential amino acids. So right off the bat, it's twice the concentration of essential amino acid, over twice the concentration as whey protein, and it's more digestible.

So after I interviewed you last time, I started— I mean, I started literally like my water always has your aminos in it now, always. Because I'm— I keep thinking of that almost like an insurance policy. Like, I want to make sure— is that— oh, I have a couple questions there.

Yeah.

One, should I be doing that? Should everyone— people be listening— be drinking it all day long like that? Or is it just like a certain amount, like one serving, that you, that you really need? And then what's the difference, if you could touch on BCAAs? Because that's what so many of us learned for so many years, is just take branched-chain aminos.

Yes. So I'll answer the question about like how much should you be taking, when and how. And then make sure I answer that well for you. And then let's get into BCAAs and maybe even just like other amino acid supplements in general. So in short, I think this is true for both protein and for amino acid supplementation, okay, is getting it in every day and getting a sufficient amount in every day is the number one most important thing. So if you end up concentrating all your protein intake and all your essential amino acid and everything to the end of the day, like That is more important than trying to time it out perfectly throughout the day. That said, yeah, that said, timing does matter. It does have an impact and it's relevant in this conversation around, again, stress. If you're getting older or you're dieting, or you have really significant performance goals, timing becomes more important. If you're just like hanging out, 25-year-old kind of generally, you know, active, don't overeat, like it doesn't matter as much. But if you're 45 and you're trying to stay trim and fit, and you also want to be athletic, you want to age well, it's like, it becomes more important. I think the general guidance would be to consume protein or essential amino acids every few hours. Basically when you consume protein, and this is like old school bodybuilding, like they were right about a lot of things a long time ago, but basically when you consume protein or essential amino acids in general, You kick off this bout of protein synthesis that lasts for a few hours. And after that, and it depends on like what type of protein you ate and whether it was, you know, just amino acids or more slowly digested protein, it lasts for, you know, 3 to 4 hours. And then you start to go into a potential net protein, like negative balance, meaning you don't have new protein in your body and new amino acids in your body. So your body may potentially to a very small degree, this is not to worry people, actually start to. Break down muscle to supply the rest of the body with amino acids. And so if you really want to optimize, you would consume protein or amino acids every few hours.

Okay.

So I think that's kind of like the— that's like the ideal situation. And, you know, the way that I think about it practically for myself is I'm not super hungry in the morning. So first thing in the morning, I have— I actually have, and we can get into this— I have a few servings of aminos and creatine.

Okay.

And then a few hours later, I have breakfast. And then a few hours later I have more aminos, and then a few hours later I have like a later lunch.

Yeah.

And then I probably have like a dinner after that. And then I have maybe aminos again at the end of the day. That's like, that's a lot. I, I've built and run an aminos company and a protein company, you know, it's like, so I'm consuming it a lot, but I'm kind of thinking, and I think you could replace those with a protein shake or you could replace it with some beef jerky or Greek yogurt or whatever works for you. I would just say the reason why I choose to do the essential amino acids and that amount of them is because they are— and particularly because I'm over 40, and we'll get into this in a second about like formula— they're way more effective than even my own Kion-branded protein powder, which I like. And I will, I will drink my protein powder. It's like, but it's, it's, I just know it's way more effective. And on top of it, it's a much lower caloric load. There's like way less calories and I want to stay leaner.

So every time I've shared about Kion Aminos, I get a couple questions. I get questions like, can this replace my actual protein? Like, if I— can this replace protein, or is it more just to have it on top of? And then I'll also get, you know, how do you count this? So can you help give some insight on that too? And then we'll circle back to BCAAs.

Yeah, so what I would just say is keep it really simple. I would say don't go below 0.7 grams of protein.

Okay.

I think, particularly for your audience, in real whole food.

Yep.

Not even like protein powder. Like, I think build a healthy relationship with like finding the sources of protein that you like, whether that's eggs or yogurt or meats or fish or tofu. For people who want to be more plant-based, it's like basically the highest quality plant protein source you can get. Like, find the things you like and eat real whole food meals. After that, when you're trying to like go above that, which I think, you know, it's like for midlife woman, I would be eating more than 0.7 grams for sure of protein per day. I think look towards supplementation. And if you are trying to stay leaner, then essential amino acids are going to by far be the most effective. They're going to be much more effective than just like protein powder.

So I do, just personally, y'all, I do— well, what I, I will say, I consistently do about 6 scoops a day. So because I'll put 2 at a time in a water bottle. If you're on video, you can see about this size. So that's like pretty much what I do. But what I didn't expect was— I was doing it all because of what you told me, Angela. Like, honestly, like when I interviewed you last time, I was like, okay, I need to up this. I was thinking of it as an insurance policy. But what I didn't expect is when I've had recovery stuff happen, like not even workout related. So for example, I had shared that I had my eyelids done and I showed recovery. Part of what I was doing was adding your aminos and I recovered like at a hyper speed. So I wasn't expecting that. What's happening there? Like, why is that speeding up recovery? Why does that help us with that?

Yeah. So there's many studies specifically looking at pre and post surgery and the consumption of essential amino acids in increasing the rate of recovery. Some of the original studies before they even started looking, because a lot of, a lot of studies around this kind of stuff, you have to get sponsored by someone, right? So it's like there's sports supplement type people that sponsor, but a lot of it more is like clinical, right? Like what about burn victims or Uh, or the elderly around surgery, et cetera, or cancer patients. Like they're looking at these types of contexts to see how some type of supplements could actually create value. So there's actually a lot of studies around this. And basically again, surgery and is just another example of a stressed-based physiology, right? Your body literally is undergoing this significant stress of being either injured, sick, cut open, operated on. And the area of that specific domain needs additional attention, but also just the body overall is kind of in a, is in a stress response state. And so if you don't consume some type of supplementation, you potentially just like really extend out what that recovery period will be. And it's actually— it's pretty similar to what you actually recommended. It's like 2 servings— 2— it's either like 2 servings like 3 times a day, or you can take 3 servings at once 2 times a day, and it dramatically improves recovery.

Okay, talk to us about BCAAs. Why did that get so popular? And Is that a waste at this point just to do BCAAs?

Yeah, what I would just say is for most people, it's a waste.

Okay.

And— but I'll give some nuance to it. So basically, what happens in like the real world around nutrition science and studies are you've got these academics, they're studying something, they're trying to figure it out. You've got industry trying to figure out if they can make products that they can turn into something. And, you know, about 40 years ago, this space started to get a lot more interest. And what was uncovered was it seemed like there were these 3 amino acids, which are the branched chain amino acids, leucine, isoleucine, and valine, that had a really big role in protein synthesis. And what scientists initially thought was, wow, maybe if you only supplement with these three, then what you can do is you can get all the benefits we talked about so far in the show about aminos, right? Like all these things we're talking about earlier, like maybe you only need to take these three. Yeah. Like instead of a protein powder, just take these three. And that's because what happens is leucine, the first of these branched chain amino acids, is like the most important protein. It's the star. And you can choose whatever metaphor, whether you're talking about like a band and it's like the lead singer, or football team, it's the quarterback, whatever it is, it's the star. But you can't have a great band without a guitarist and a bass player and a drummer. You can't have, you know, like an awesome football team without everyone else on the line. And so the original studies showed like, oh, there's this big spike in protein synthesis. And without boring your audience, like how they measure it, you can measure it in the blood, these changes, you can see like protein synthesis increasing. So they saw these big spikes, but as we measured it more and more over time, what we uncovered as a scientific community was that the spike crashes immediately. So you get this really big signal, like, whoa, star quarterback, but then there's no good supporting— there's no one to throw the ball to. And basically protein synthesis just collapses. And so some of those earliest studies over time were used to develop and market products, and there are still brands out there that do that. They still sell branched-chain amino acids as if they provide all these benefits. They don't. They don't provide those benefits. And there's a really good, pretty conclusive meta-analysis, just meaning they looked at a lot of studies. It's called BCAA: Myth or Reality from 2017 that looked at it. And basically branched-chain amino acids taken on their own are— do not increase anabolism. They don't increase protein synthesis at all. Zero. If anything, they potentially could be catabolic because they stimulate the body to want— like, they tell us the body, like, oh, there's all this leucine and valine and isoleucine, maybe we should do this. But then there's none of the other available amino acids. And so there's potential hypotheses that actually provokes the muscle then to want to break down to supply the blood with these additional amino acids that it needs.

So it could be detrimental. I mean, it can be detrimental.

So I would say BCAAs on their own are not worth their money and not worth taking. I just— the scientific nuance I want to offer is, yeah, if you were to take the BCAAs with some other type of protein source at the same time, they could enhance how that protein source works. So if you took BCAAs while you ate some chicken, the combination of those two could actually, like, benefit each other. I think it's probably more likely, like, BCAAs plus whey, if you, like, took them at the same time, they could create a benefit, which makes sense because I think bodybuilders back in the day, that's they would mix together.

You know, you'd basically, you would put, that would be your concoction.

You're basically making like your own little custom, like super whey protein powder, right?

Yeah.

But what I would just say though, is like just taking the essential amino acids on their own is going to create like the most superior and maximal protein synthesis for the lowest total caloric load. So it's like, it's still gonna, it's going to outperform you trying to make your perfect concoction of BCAAs plus whey protein. It's like, just take the essential amino acids. It's like, it's more effective. You don't— I think what you're realizing is you're getting all this other stuff from the whey and you're trying to like figure out the perfect proportions of how much BCAAs plus the whey protein. Whereas like you look at something like Kion Aminos, I mean, we're talking, I don't know the exact number to date now, but it's like 100 studies looking at these types of proportions of amino acids on various populations and the benefits that they offer. Like, it's just, it's a much easier, more effective, uh, direct line to try to get what you want versus you trying to concoct kind of your— you—

by the way, you all, I'm the one who— I actually found Kion. They didn't find me. So even though I feature them a lot, I found them initially. And the reason I found them is there's just a lot of junk out there. So one of the amino acids that tastes disgusting is leucine. It's like literally tastes disgusting. So most, most, um, aminos— look, even looking back at BCAAs, they would use a ton of artificial sweeteners to to basically counter that taste. So a lot of BCAAs and then a lot of companies that say that they're aminos, they just taste disgusting or they have a lot of artificial junk in them. Yours actually tastes good. I love your berry ones. I always tell everyone the berry is my favorite, but can you— what should people like— I'm hoping everyone will try Kion, but let's just say they're just looking and they don't see Kion or whatever it is. What do people need to be aware of that So they're not getting junk. What should they be looking at?

So I think that the first most important thing to look at is to not buy any amino product that it's a proprietary formula. And what that means is if you look at the back of like a, and I'll just use the example of Kion Aminos. If you look at the back of the bottle, what you're going to see is it's going to list all the 9 amino acids, but it's literally going to tell you leucine and it's going to say 2000 milligrams per serving.

Yeah. It has nothing proprietary.

It's just, you actually see the amount of each amino acid. And the reason why that's important is because there is no benefit to the consumer and no reason to hide the proportions of the amino acids. This is all widely published data. There's not some fancy special thing out there that someone has like the most perfect, you know, version of it. Basically, it is— it's just widely published acceptable data that shows what you really want and what you need. And the only reason to put it in a proprietary formula is because the brand can try to sell to some type of marketing thing. It allows them to have much lower quality standards potentially, like you don't have to hit strength testing per each amino acid. You can change the proportions of the amino acids whenever you want. You don't have to tell the— you don't have to show the consumer what you change on, on like one lot to the next. It creates a lot of flexibility and ease for the businesses. It does not provide any value or safety for the consumer. So avoid proprietary formulas. And there's some like pretty significant brands that do proprietary formulas. Yeah, so I would just stay away from that. The next most important thing is going to be to Look for ideal proportions. And this one's like, you know, a little— I'm not saying this just because I'm trying to sell you on the Kion. It's like, I'll describe what it is, but really you should go look at the Kion label. And like, those proportions are based off the, like, you know, the consolidation of the last couple decades of research from the leading labs, like University of Texas Medical Branch, University of Arkansas Medical Branch. Like, these were like the big labs, came from like all the big names, you know, Dr. Bob Wolff, Dr. Arnie Ferrando, now Dr. David Church. Like, these, these are the people that are doing all the research, basically the formula will be generally kind of, and this is the kind of the chronology of how they built it. The proportions are similar to what you would find in human skeletal muscle. Like literally if you biopsied skeletal muscle, but then you need to increase the leucine to 40%, increase the isoleucine and valine to maintain their original proportions and increase the lysine because the lysine is slower to get into the muscle tissue. I know I just said a lot. And so that's why I'm like, I don't, I don't expect everyone's going to—

maybe it was a lysine, lysine, by the way, that tastes good. It was one of them that I, that is usually trying to— is that what I meant? The lysine?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of them, a lot of them taste gross. I mean, probably the most gross is methionine.

Okay.

Um, but yeah. And so what I would just say is, if you look at like the breakdown of what's on the Kion Aminos bottle, like if you don't buy Kion, like that, look for that. Like that's the kind of breakdown you want. Um, and one other important, you know, note in that that we didn't get into earlier is the reason why the leucine is so high. The leucine is 40% of this formula. Is because, and I hinted at this earlier, you know, I said, oh, you know, something like Kion Aminos or this, these, uh, amino acids are 3 times the impact of whey and thus like 6 times the impact of protein, even like beef. It's even greater when you get older if you increase the amount of leucine. And so what, and I'll give a, try to give a really clear example of this. If you give, you know, a 25-year-old the Kion Aminos formula, right? Or you give them whey, Kion whey, the Kion Aminos protein, the Kion Aminos is going to be about 3 times the impact as the whey, right? If you do that same example for a 60-year-old woman, the Kion Aminos are going to be 6 times the impact as the same dose as whey. So why is that? Like, why is it that like, you know, it's not— it's that the whey became less effective over time and the aminos maintained their efficacy. The way you get the aminos to maintain their efficacy and actually become so much more impactful is because what people need as they get older, or people need as they're dieting, or people need as they're recovering from surgery, or people need as any type of stress, is more leucine as part of the total essential amino acid formula that they're getting.

Wow.

They also need this, a little bit of enhanced, enhanced amount of the other two BCAAs and the lysine. Like, you need all that in the mix, but it's really this much larger dose of leucine. And so you really want to see a brand telling you what's in it and showing you that it's 40% leucine. Because if you're a midlife woman and you're just getting something that's not that amount, that's like a much lower amount of leucine, and maybe it has higher amounts of tryptophan or methionine, these other ones, you are not getting the maximum benefit.

Yeah, we're gonna have no idea. It just says proprietary. We don't have any idea.

And you're just getting a much lower benefit. Like, what I would say is, in general, one way I like to think about is when you do this kind of leucine enrichment, for each decade It's about that many times greater than protein. So when you're 30, it's like 3 times better than whey protein. When you're 40, it's 4 times. When you're 50, it's 5 times. When you're 60, it's 6 times better. And so you really want to see these higher amounts of leucine. If it's not in there, it's, it's not going to provide the maximum benefit. Good. And then, yeah, okay.

Yeah.

And I think the last thing is just like, you don't need other stuff. Like, you know, again, supplement companies are always— all companies are trying to sweeten the deal, right? With like some special marketing mumbo jumbo that they've come up with, right? Like they're always trying to come up with some new thing they're selling you. You don't need whatever else stuff they're trying— like, they're gonna— we've got this additional amino acid, or we've got these other special— I'm trying not to name things that I know other brands sell, but they have other— they have other marketing mumbo-jumbo ingredients that they've added to try to make their things seem special. And the literature does not show that you need that stuff to get all these benefits I've talked about today. They're just putting it in there to try to convince you that they're somehow special.

I actually cannot stand— that's one thing I just do not like about certain supplements. Like, I don't like supplements that add things that aren't what I'm asking for. So for For example, like, you— if you want— like, if I— like, I love digestive enzymes, for example. I don't want my digestive enzyme to also have caffeine in it. I'm just making something up. How, you know, people like try to do— they combine things. I'm like, I don't want you to combine. I just want the ingredient. Like, I just want the thing. So I get what you're saying there, and you're right. Like, they, they take this, then they'll add all these other things, and you're like, I just wanted the aminos. I didn't want all that stuff.

Because then, yeah, it's like— I get it. It's like, it's the way like business and marketing works. People trying to differentiate themselves and have something special and prove, you know, it's And, and my approach in life, as I told you earlier, like, I'm just trying to look for, like, simple, real solutions. What can I adhere to? What actually works? Like building a company and building products that literally are just what have all the smartest scientists seen actually work? What have I taken in my experience actually works? And like build products that just do that and have awesome customer service and just do it, you know, keep it simple.

I'm going to link up Kion below you all because I, if anything, I really want you to try aminos. I think that they make such a big difference. And this is one of those key things that I tell, especially midlife women, like, this is such an easy thing to add. You just add it to your water and you're drinking your water and everyone's carrying their waters or bottles around anyway all day. So you add it there. But another thing that I've been adding to my water now, I just do mine during my workout. So I'm interested to dive into this with you is creatine. And I actually hadn't even used your creatine until recently. I know when we connected, I now have your creatine. And so I've been adding that and I like it. I got a lot of questions about creatine. I think women tend to hear creatine creatine and we hear, we think of a few things. We think bodybuilder and then we think, or if they think they're not working out that hard, do they need it? And then we hear bloat. Can you— what's going on with creatine? How much do we really need and how is this helping midlife women?

So I would agree with you. Like, I would say while creatine is this, there's a lot of hype around it right now. I think it's well-placed. It is a good, real supplement that's got hundreds of human studies behind it. It's totally worth people's time and considering. I think for a midlife woman, I would prioritize aminos over it personally. That's what I tell my wife. That's what I tell my mom. That's what I tell, you know, my friends. That's what I prioritize. And once you've got an aminos habit, creatine is a great additional thing to stack. So what creatine does is— maybe people have heard of like aerobic energy, anaerobic energy, or like aerobic and anaerobic exercise at some time in their life. Basically what that is, is like when you go for a run, it's kind of like, are you using oxygen to help convert the sugars in your body into energy? Or are you using this more complex process? Like there's actually different ways to create energy in your body when you're running or doing cardio or lifting weights, et cetera. Well, there's this third type of energy system and it's called the phosphocreatine energy system. And basically it is when you are doing some type of like intense burst of things. So that would be like resistance training, like you were doing bench press or you're doing pull-ups or you're doing any type of resistance exercise. It's also if, when you sprint and what it is, is like your body needs energy really quickly. It needs to get converted really quickly. And so what happens is when you consume creatine, which in our normal diet we get from things like red meat and fish, it's really not in plants at all. So if you don't eat plants, like, I mean, if you don't eat, if you don't eat animal proteins, definitely consider supplementing. What happens is, uh, you eat this, it gets stored in your muscles and we'll get to it. It gets a little bit, gets stored in your brain. And when you go to do these intense forms of exercise, the more that you have stored in your muscle, the easier it is to do them. So what naturally happens if you start supplementing with creatine, if you start taking 3 to 5 grams a day, after a few weeks, what you'll find is, oh, I used to be able to do 5 pull-ups, now I can do 7. And the reason why you can do that 7 pull-ups is you literally have a bit more of this kind of very available chemical energy in your muscle tissue that allows you to do one more pull-up. And if you consistently take this, uh, you know, as a supplement and you can just consistently train, what's going to happen is you are going to get stronger over time because naturally it's like exercise becomes easier. Yeah.

Questions here though. So tell me if these are not true. So I thought that we were supposed to do it around the workout. Like you take it during the time you're working out. Are you saying that doesn't matter? You can take it, you can have it at any time.

The most important thing for creatine is that you take it every day.

So it has nothing to do with taking it around your workout?

What I would say is it has— so there are hundreds of studies on creatine. There are some studies that potentially point to taking after your workout may help the creatine to have greater uptake into the muscle tissue. But I'm talking like, it's a— I wouldn't worry about it. Like, I would—

I swear my husband told me this, but he's not a scientist. He's not done the research like you, but I swear he's the one who Did I hear this wrong that he had once said you take it during your workout because it helps pull water into your muscle, which helps give you a bigger pump. Where did that come from? Is that a BroScience thing or is that my husband made that up? Or what is that?

Yeah. Bigger pump. That's, uh, yeah, that's what you just said does not make a ton of sense. Like the greater pump is going to be more about like blood flow. Right. So that's okay.

Got it.

Like, yeah.

Maybe that's what he meant.

But what I would say, but what I would say is that the creatine, and this is actually gonna be a good segue into like bloating and and et cetera.

Yeah. Cause that's what everyone associates with creatine.

Yeah. Yeah. So the creatine getting sucked, the creatine going into your muscle and maximizing, like you taking creatine and it going into your muscle, that is the most important thing, but it's not in this session right now. It's because you've been taking creatine consistently, that more creatine is stored in your muscle that you get the benefits of it from a workout.

So that's not that it's pulling water into it.

It's just how Or, yeah, so here's the, so that, so I'm trying to separate it. So the big idea is you need to take creatine every day and get creatine into your muscle so that it's available when you work out. Like that's, that's the idea of how you get the benefits for your, for your exercise performance and building better muscle. And that's not necessarily bigger muscle, which is going to be really interesting when we get to about women, because it has not shown to basically lead to hypertrophy or bigger muscles in women. It doesn't make women's muscles bigger. It just makes women stronger. And more tone.

Okay.

Which is really interesting. Cause I think like, so that's totally debunked and it's very awesome. I think studies around that, that it's like, it actually does help men develop bigger muscles. Women, there's really nothing that shows that it makes the women's muscles any bigger. It just makes them stronger. But that's the big idea. Now, when you consume creatine, the way that it gets pulled into the muscle and stored in the muscle is with water molecules.

Okay.

So if you want to enhance the amount of creatine that gets absorbed into the muscle, There are little hacks, like potentially taking it after you work out and you drink a bunch of water. And for whatever reason, like the, the muscle is more apt to want to absorb it after an exercise session. But again, I'm saying it's not that, it's not that significant. Like really, I would not focus on that. Another thing would be taking it with some type of carb or, or taking it with aminos. Actually, a meat with aminos, you're going to get a small little insulin spike. Like very small, but what's going to happen is that's going to increase the amount of creatine that gets absorbed into the muscle. So I do, I mean, I take my creatine and my aminos first thing in the morning simply because it's the easiest habit for me, but there is the added benefit of the fact that the aminos are slightly enhancing the amount of creatine that gets absorbed. But I'm like, again, I think worshiping this or like talking about this stuff, it's like, just start taking creatine every day. It doesn't matter when you take it.

Yeah.

And if you've got it, yeah. Natalie, if you've got a good habit around taking it when you work out, do that. It doesn't like, but you're not getting—

The thing about the creatine is there's little, there's like no taste to it. So you can just add it. It's easy. That's a really easy one to add to.

Super easy. Yeah.

So, and then is there, okay. So what about the bloating though? Because why do women think that they're going to bloat?

There's this idea of the bloating around the fact that when you take creatine, it does make you retain a bit more water in your muscle. Like, so if you start taking, if you do a body scan today, measuring your lean mass and your body fat percentage and all of that, and you start taking creatine today, and then you redo that test about 3 weeks from now, it will show that you have a little bit more muscle, like lean mass. But really what it's going to show is you have a little bit more intracellular water. It's going to show like—

like, so that's for the pulling water.

For a normal-sized woman, like, yeah, maybe you have like a half pound more of water that you're storing in your muscle. It's not like you're getting bloated like in your belly or in your, you know, like in your thighs or your face, like literally throughout all of your muscles, throughout your body, there's a little bit more water that's accompanying the creatine, but it is not significant. And actually, when they look at long-term studies of it, it seems to kind of just like not actually be relevant or potentially get washed out.

If you eat red meat, you eat it daily, or you eat a lot of it, do you still need creatine? Just like the way you said, even if you eat chicken or beef, you still need aminos because you're not necessarily getting the full percentages from that. Is that the same thing with creatine or does it matter?

Yeah, so I think even, even like kind of normalizing it for people with who have animal-based diets, the inclusion of additional supplemental creatine increases performance. It increases exercise performance, and we get into like it increases cognitive performance as well. And what I would say is in general, women have lower creatine stores than men do. And typically, oh, that's not true for all women, they typically tend to eat less red meat and fish and things like that than men sometimes do. So I think if you're a midlife woman, it makes sense in general that, well, regardless of my gender, I'm going to get benefit from adding this supplement. And I already have less stores than my male counterparts, my husband, and I maybe don't like— I'm not just like scarfing down red meat all the time. So it's just an easier way to get it in. So it's, it's both an insurance policy, but there really is advantages even if you're already eating red meat. Like, there, by consuming more of it, you're getting benefits.

Now there's a— there's this big trend around creatine lately for midlife women, almost like this miracle supplement, like it's going to help prevent Alzheimer's, it helps with your sleep. Like, how much of that is true or hype? And how much do you actually have to have?

Great question. So just debunk a few things. There are not meaningful studies that show that it's going to prevent dementia. And it's unfortunate how the— I don't know if it's people don't understand how to read the studies, or they just get excited or whatever. There are like studies where they measure, hey, if you take this creatine, are there increased creatine stores in people's brains? That are older, potentially with dementia, like, yeah, there's studies that show that, but they don't show that it corrected or reversed or did anything to the actual, like, dementia outcomes. If you really want to, I think, avoid and prevent dementia, which I would just like— that's a quick plug for some other products, um, building and maintaining muscle is really key. So I think in general, like, creatine can support that, but it just helps with overall your blood sugar regulation, which is going to minimize the amount of, like, kind of inflammation and other types of things that happen that dry— a lot of these diseases are inflammation-based, everything from dementia to cancer.

Why does creatine help with that?

Well, again, I'm not saying that creatine is actually going to reduce the dementia. I'm just saying that building and maintaining muscle is.

Oh, muscle in general.

I think building and maintaining muscle in general is. Creatine as a supplement is not. Like there's nothing that shows that it's going to do that. A supplement that I think does have really meaningful implications for that is omega-3, like omega-3 supplementation. That's like a whole other podcast we can do. But like, and that's like why Kion, we make an omega-3 because the literature is so strong around it. Like we're talking 15% reduction in risk of developing things like dementia if you increase your omega-3 consumption. So I think it's kind of unfortunate where things like creatine that do all these other awesome things get promoted as if it's going to do that. It's not. But there are some supplements that, that do.

That's it.

If I'm hearing it does have good cognitive benefits.

But it's support— it's also the bigger thing is it's supporting you with muscle and the muscle is the bigger, more important thing because you have muscle everything.

I think specifically for like dementia.

Okay.

Well, now creatine does have an impact on cognition. And basically where it has an impact is when you— I feel like I'm repeating myself on this and hopefully it doesn't feel like I'm annoying sciencey, but this stress-based physiology thing. Like, if you are sleep deprived, your brain does not function as well as it typically does. So if you typically need to get 8 hours of sleep to feel good, and on a given night you only get 5, that next day, consuming a much larger dose of creatine than you would normally consume— we're talking instead of 5-gram serving, 10 to 15 grams— okay, what happens is your muscle absorbs it, but there's leftover amount that your brain can also absorb. Your brain is the other biggest place where creatine gets stored. And we hypothesize in a similar mechanism to how it works with like your muscle, basically it supports the brain in kind of quicker energy function. So it supports it in processing. So what we've found is that in sleep deprived people taking this higher dose, 10 to 15 grams, you get slightly improved, like, like memory, slightly improved focus. Uh, you don't, they're like, there's a lot of different ways of measuring, uh, mental performance, but I personally have experienced it as well that I take I take a higher dose of creatine and it helps me overcome some of the aspects of sleep deprivation.

I love how you just explained this because I feel it's so hard to weed through marketing hype and real things with the studies. So I hear what you're saying, like people take one aspect of it and then that's a whole marketing campaign around that one thing, but it's so taken out of context.

Yeah, and I think too there's just elements of like people are trying to figure out how to have things to say, have things to sell, have things to do. And they get like one study and it gets like distorted into this whole other thing.

So, and so, and if I also heard you correctly, it's totally okay to mix them together. In fact, you should mix them together. You can mix aminos and creatine together. You're going to get bigger benefit. And if I also heard you correctly, so this doesn't— you don't want to count like your aminos towards your grams of protein.

You still need to get 0.75 grams I think you can count it to above that. So what I guess what I'm saying is what I don't want to do is encourage people to stop eating real food and eating real meals. But what I would say is like for most people probably in your audience, I would be aiming for higher than 0.7 grams of protein. I'd be aiming for like 1.2 probably, right? Or minimum, you know, like 1. And so what I would say is try to get there. You can count the aminos. I just wouldn't count it for the first 0.7 because I don't want to discourage you. I don't want to discourage audience from eating real food, but for that next 0.5 that trying to eat, you can totally take aminos. And I would say in general, you know, like one scoop of Kion Aminos for someone in their 40s is gonna be equal to about 4 to 5 times that amount of protein. So like one scoop is 5 grams of active essential amino acids, it's equal to about 20-25 grams of protein.

That's wild. So yeah, that makes— I mean, I've definitely shared before, and now it's registering even more about not choking down more protein because it's like gram for gram, you're actually gonna get more of the benefit building block from this. But if I also— I'm hearing correctly, it's not a replacement thing. It's not a don't have the other food. It's do this in addition to.

I think it's truly supplemental, and I think this is a good way of thinking about it. It's like using this as a supplemental tool to make your life better versus like a total replacement. And I think another interesting way of thinking about that too is protein powder technically is a supplement, but if I have a big protein shake, like I'm— and as you get older and your appetite decreases, or you're on a GLP-1 or something like You have a big whey protein shake, like you're not going to be hungry for a while, right? Whereas you can take Aminos and it satiates you, like it satiates your mind, right? Like it gets rid of cravings in a really amazing way because it also supports neurotransmitter balance, etc. But it doesn't make you feel really full. So you still feel kind of light and like on your feet and not stuffed, but you hit these like these needs for these protein requirements, and yet you could still have lunch in 3 hours or in 2 hours, right? So I think it's, it's really awesome supplemental tool in that way. So yeah, I think it can totally be part of trying to hit these higher daily protein requirements. I would just make it truly supplemental to building a healthy relationship with real food, you know, 2 or 3 times a day and, and just use it to get to that extra level. I think it's also great to think about as this kind of insurance policy. Because it's hard some days just to like fit it all in and figure it out. And I just know, you know, it works. And so another thing I would say is it can totally complement meals as well. Like there may be situations where it's, I am not super hungry, but I know I need to eat right now. And I'm not— maybe not gonna get another time to eat later. And I'm gonna have some salad and vegetables and some eggs, but like, I only want— and I'm like, I'm a, you know, I'm 185 pounds.

Yeah. Like, you don't want 10 eggs, you want one or two.

Yeah, I want like 2 eggs. I'm like, but 2 eggs is only 14 grams of protein. It's like, well, I have some vegetables, I have to have these 2 eggs, and I take some aminos. And I'm like, boom, like, I did it.

You just gave me permission for my 2 eggs, and I don't want to have more than 2 eggs in the morning. It's like, yeah, that's— but it makes a lot. So if you go to— I'm going to link all this in the show notes, of course, but if you go to GetKion kion.com/nataliejill. They've already set it up to, for you to try it 20% off. I do the berry aminos. They have a bunch of different flavors, but berry is my favorite. And I get it on auto-ship just so I don't have to think about it. And it just comes here every month. I've now added their creatine and I'm really liking it. So if you have not tried creatine or if you've wanted to, it's a myth about the, you're gonna feel bloated. You're not, you're definitely not on these. These feel really good and they're just a great insurance policy. Angelo, what do you wish I had asked you that I left out? What do you want my listeners to know? What did I forget to ask you?

Gosh, Natalie, you ask great questions and I feel like you really like just follow your own interest and intuition around it. So I'm having a hard time thinking of something. I think, I guess, in all these kinds of conversations where I always try to come back to as a conclusion for folks is like, rather than trying to understand it all or implement everything. If there's one thing from this conversation today that got you excited or motivated, just try to implement that one thing.

Yeah.

And like that again, it's like this kind of thing around like adherence and just like, what are the things we'll actually do in life that make us feel better and live better versus trying to like be perfect and get it all right? Like, choose the one thing you really liked and like, if you're still listening and you're motivated, like, just try to implement that one thing.

I love it. I learned a lot from you today. You cleared up some myths. Thank you so much, Angelo. Thank you.

Thank you, Natalie Jill.