← LEVELS – A Whole New Level
LEVELS – A Whole New Level
#296 - The Truth About Protein: Why Exercise is the Secret to Muscle Growth and Longevity | Dr. Stuart Phillips & Mike Haney
01:10:31
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- [00:06]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
80% to 90% of the benefit you know, the protein provides you basically is baked in by doing exercise. The rest is a protein mediated effect. Everybody goes, so tell me your takeaway. And I said, well, in the absence of exercise, these new recommendations will not change anything. So far as you know, any chronic disease out there, it's not going to budge the needle. You know, the exercise is the, is the big driver, the protein, all good, don't get me wrong. But without exercise you're not going to use it for sure. You're definitely not going to gain muscle.
- [00:44]
Mike Haney
I'm Mike Haney, editorial director here at Levels we're building tech that helps people understand their metabolic health. And along the way we have conversations with thought leaders about research backed information so you can take your health and into your hands. This is a whole new level.
- [01:04]
Narrator/Host Introduction
Protein has become one of those health topics that somehow feels both overhyped and under explained at the same time. Everywhere you look there's a new number to hit, a new powder to buy, a new rule about timing dosage or whether or not you're wasting your workout if and you don't drink a shake within 30 minutes. But the more useful question is probably simpler than that. What is protein actually doing and when does it really matter? In this episode, Mike Haney sits down with Dr. Stuart Phillips, one of the world's leading researchers on protein metabolism, muscle health and exercise to separate what actually matters from what's mostly noise. They talk about why protein alone doesn't build muscle, why exercise is what creates the demand for it and why a lot of conversation around protein timing, powders and ultra high intake misses the bigger picture. Dr. Phillips also gets into what changes as we age, why muscle becomes more important as we get older, and why resistance training may be doing far more of the work than most people realize. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by protein advice, the episode brings science back to what's practical, what's proven and what actually matters. Anyway, no need to wait. Here is Haney with Dr. Stuart Phillips.
- [02:38]
Mike Haney
Well, Dr. Stuart Phillips, thanks so much for joining us today.
- [02:40]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
My pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show, Mike.
- [02:42]
Mike Haney
So before we we dive into everything we're going to talk about, I'm just sort of curious because you've been studying protein for 25 years plus what's it like as a researcher when your field of research becomes the kind of hot buzzy thing as it has the last couple of years? I would imagine it's a double edged sword. Like maybe on one hand it's easier to get research funding. But on the other hand, there's probably a lot more misinformation and every influencer now has an opinion about the thing you've been studying.
- [03:07]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
You're spot on actually. I mean, it's great, I think. Yeah, sorry. Being a McMaster now for 28 years and so been doing probably protein for a little bit longer. But when I first got into this and I was going to conferences, it was all about, particularly for athletics and sport performance, it was all carbohydrates. And then we went through a phase where it was all about fats. And now finally proteins in the spotlight. So great that it's here awesome to get all the attention. But as you said, there is a double edged sword. I mean the number of protein containing products is skyrocketed. It's everybody's favorite nutrient and social media has just exploded. And the claims that are made around protein now are, well, some of them, let's just say a little bit wild and you know, but, but the who doesn't like the attention, right? I don't know about research funding. That's, I'm waiting for that to roll in. But we've, we've done okay with, with protein related research for sure.
- [04:11]
Mike Haney
Well, well, that's, I think a good lead into where I want to start, which is with the numbers because I think that's, you know, when you talk about protein, this is the takeaway. If folks aren't going to watch the whole episode, what they want to hear is what does the expert say I actually need. And I know you've been pretty consistent, I think for a good number of years now about the values you think are appropriate. And then I want to dig into all the sort of nuance around it. But let's just maybe start there with the RDA and what you recommend and what maybe some of the other, the upper end then of what often gets recommended.
- [04:40]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, I think that somebody told me one time that how much protein do I need? Is one of the most entered questions on Google or something with respect to sport and supplements and everything. So the RDA or Recommended Dietary Allowance, which hasn't changed, just for the record, there's some new dietary guidance and we can dig into that, but sits at 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Now I know you got a US audience, so translating that, it's 0.35 grams of protein per pound of body weight. And I, you know, myself and probably about a half a dozen other researchers have been of the opinion that that's too low. It's established using an old methodology. I don't think it's overly appropriate to use it in current context. So we would say, or I would say that it should be closer to about at least 0.5 grams per pound and probably closer to about 0.7 grams per pound. Beyond about 0.7, I think it gets really hard to show the benefit of more and more protein. So that scales up at the per kg body weight, somewhere between 1.2 and to 1.6 grams per kg of body weight.
- [06:05]
Mike Haney
Yeah. And, and I, I always like to put this in a little bit of kind of real world context for people because I. One of the things I found when I talk about this is when you start talking about 1.2 versus 1.6 or 0.3 versus 0.5, it sounds like we're really splitting hairs, but when you actually put that into real numbers. So like if you're 150 pound person, the RDA would be about 50 grams a day, 50 to 60. You're Atias of the world would be telling you to take in 150 grams and you're probably somewhere in the middle of 100. And you know, if a chicken breast is 30, we're talking about do you want to eat one chicken breast a day or five? Like there's a big difference in how you structure your diet depending on which is these sort of guidances you follow. So maybe we'll just start at kind of that bottom end. Why do you feel that the 0.8 is, is not enough? And maybe this is a good place to just explain what nitrogen balance is and why you think it's not really the best methodology anymore.
- [07:00]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, yeah. So the balance of nitrogen in versus out is considered. Oh, I mean, it's been long time considered, you know, a hallmark of protein, mainly because protein is the only source of nitrogen that we have or the main source of nitrogen that we have in our diet. So you know, if you measure how much is going in in the diet and how much is coming out and urine, these are great studies to do because you got to collect fecal samples and everything else like this. So I think I could be wrong on this, but I think that I might be one of the last people in terms of the literature to in recent memory conduct the full nitrogen balance in athletes where we did sweat washdowns, we collected fecal samples, we collected urine and everything. They're wonderful. But let's just say I've got grad students to do that stuff. Now, but I wouldn't make them do that. But it treats every amino acid, which are the building blocks of protein, as the same. It essentially equates all protein is just nitrogen. And there's no nuance for understanding specific roles of certain amino acids. And what it defines is a minimum. And to that minimum there's a safety margin added. And it's really about, I think prevention of deficiency would be the right way to describe how the method is used. You know, there's a big difference between prevention of deficiency and then optimization of health outcomes. And the analogy that I think people can understand much quicker is to say that, you know, we used to say that the requirement for vitamin C was enough to prevent scurvy. And that's awesome. Like, you know, who wants to get scurvy, right? But then we recognized that eating more than their basal requirement to prevent scurvy actually was good for you. It was good for your immune function. If you were a smoker, you needed more, all of these things. So we revised the, the estimates for vitamin C in the upward direction. But the same, you know, revision hasn't been made for protein despite, at least in my opinion and several others, that we've got advantages to consuming protein at above the RDA. So 1.2 grams per kilo, or, you know, as you said, 0.5 grams per pound doesn't seem like a lot, but that's 50% higher than prevention of deficiency levels. Similarly at 1.6, that's 100% higher than the prevention of deficiency level. So, you know, the, the two situations are, are quite different.
- [09:43]
Mike Haney
So if I, if I'm somebody who's getting the, the even less than the 0.8, if we trust, setting aside the, the sort of challenges with the nitrogen balance, but if we trust that 0.8 is rough, the preventing deficiency, if I'm for whatever reason getting.02, if I'm taking in 15 grams of protein a day because I'm living off, as I did in college, lucky charms and ho hos, what's happening in my body, I'm clearly not building a lot of. Well, we're going to talk more about muscle synthesis versus muscle breakdown. And I know those processes are always ongoing in some kind of balance, but what's happening within the muscle if I'm getting below that deficiency amount?
- [10:25]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, you know, protein is a substrate unlike, you know, unlike carbohydrates and fats, which, which, you know, when you boil it right down, they've got other biological rules, but they're essentially fuel. We burn them Protein forms all the structural components in our body. So you know, the one that everybody goes, oh, it's muscle. And I'm like, it is, but it's also skin. It's Also, you know, 40% of your bones mass is actually protein. It's collagen protein. But so is our heart, so is our brain, so is our live. I mean those are all just big conglomerations of cells that are, you know, a big mass of protein when you look at it. And so from that standpoint, you'd appreciate that if you weren't getting enough, you would begin to break down some sort of structural component in your body to give your body the amino acids. These are the building blocks of protein that it needs. And you know, the easiest one to break down and the sort of, you know, labile pool is muscle. So people who are consuming low protein intakes and a lot of these, like a patient scenario, is an easy one to understand. You're in bed, you're not eating much, you're sick, or maybe you're unconscious, so you're being fed through a tube, for example. We can't give people enough protein in that situation and they give up muscle to provide the amino acids that we need for other, you know, the way the body sort of looks at it is more important processes than, than muscle. So you, you lose muscle mass. And if you're in bed for long enough or if you're a patient or if you're consuming lucky charms and you know, yeah, yo yos for, for your diet, you would be giving up muscle mass over a period of time.
- [12:10]
Mike Haney
So I mean, I've heard you say that, that unlike carbs and fat, a body can't really store protein. But in some ways the muscle is sort of a storage depot for it in the sense that it is a place the body can pull from. But, but I guess under different circumstances than say we liberate, you know, carbs or fat to use as fuel.
- [12:27]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, no, exactly. I mean, I think it's a fair comparison to say muscle is a, you know, a storage pool. But if you're into performance or you're into aging, well, then your muscle is also functional reserve. And I think a lot of clinicians who deal with patients, you know, in the intensive care unit, for example, know full well that once you begin to tap deep into that functional reserve, a patient's chances of survival go down and down. And so your ability to be able to resist disease or something like that is really a direct function of how much muscle mass you have. So it is a labile pool. You can mobilize it when your body needs to, but it's essentially you're tapping in eventually to a functional reserve that it gets down to such a low level that, yeah, your chances of survival of whatever insult you have are pretty low.
- [13:28]
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- [14:38]
Mike Haney
So let's talk then about, about this kind of recommended mid range, the one 1.2 to 1.6 kg. How much individuality is there in that number? In other words, you know, what does this scatter plot look like when you do your studies? Is it the case that some people have as much sort of success as much sort of, you know, positive balance of protein synthesis versus muscle synthesis versus breakdown on 0.8 and other people do really well on 2.0 and we just kind of average around 1 6. Or is the 16 number? Because I know you've done a ton of research into this. Is that a representation of some sort of physiological process? That that's just the way amino acids and muscle tissue work, that that's, that's kind of the upper limit at which we start, beyond which I know your meta analysis is basically showing beyond that you're not getting at least efficient muscle building anymore. That's kind of the upper limit of that. But is there a lot of individuality within that number?
- [15:33]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, I mean, you know, whenever we get these recommendations and so there's a range in 1.2 to 1.6, obviously. And it's not a trivial ra, you know, if you average it out, it's probably for most people it could be a difference of maybe about 40 to 50 grams of protein a day. And that's, that's not, not a small amount, right? That's, you know, off the top you said chicken breast wise, that's, you know, that's a chicken breast and a half, so to speak. So I mean I think that it's, you know, in all of these things we, we like to give a range or we stick to one value, but there's always variation about the mean. I think one of the things that is pretty clear is the distribution does have a longer tail. So people sort of tail towards the higher end of the recommendation and that would be towards the 1.6. But you know, I'd say that at 1.2 you're probably covering about 80 odd percent of the population. And you know, to make it clear it's not that I have a problem with people going as high as 1.6, but after that. And you mentioned, you know, are there people out around sort of 2 grams per kilo? There are in certain situations like a weight loss scenario is a scenario where because, you know, everybody is familiar with when you're losing weight, you're losing fat, but you're also giving up some lean mass, some of which is muscle. Right. So you know, for those people they would have protein requirements closer to the two, but in the normal, you know, not what, non weight loss situation, 1.6 sort of, you know, that's the narrow end of the, the range. But you know, to your point, like most physiological processes, there's, there's variability. So usually what we do is when we give a range is, you know, cap it at the highest end of the range and that would be 1.6. At least in my opinion that would cover the needs of, you know, sort of 97, 98% of people out there.
- [17:39]
Mike Haney
And is that variation a function of just sort of individuality, meaning genetics, microbiome, epigenetics, et cetera, or is it a, is it a function of other things like age, gender, activity level or a little bit of both?
- [17:54]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, I mean it's, everything's in there, right? I mean, yeah, you, you're, you're baked in genes. So you know, your mom and dad, your epigenetics or the ability of you to be able to influence what mom and dad gave you, your environment, sex, probably not much, I think between males and females. We're pretty clear now that it's, it's, it's more similar than it is different for sure. Age. I, you know, I've been a long time advocate of protein intakes for older people and everybody goes, you know, well, when does aging start? I'm like, what's my age plus one? So this year it's 59. But you know, kidding aside, I mean, people on a population level, we can see detectable changes in muscle in most people at late 30s to early 40s. So if you think about, you know, that's, that's the time in which your muscle sort of plateaus and begins to tail off. That would be when I would say, you know what, you need to start thinking about consuming a little bit more protein, which is the opposite of what most people do with aging, which is actually they consume less food and less protein. So, you know, it's baked in there as well. But like everything, your genetics, your environment, your, the stress you have. But I do also think that exercise as a stressor is going to push you obviously towards the hyper end. But there's a lot of people out there who are talking about, you know, the mythical bodybuilder range is 1 gram per pound or 2.2 grams per kilo. And it's not that I have a problem with those types of intakes. In fact, we've probably been guilty, you know, our group here in some papers of saying it might be that high. I'm just not convinced it's, it's necessary to get up to there. I think it might be safe, quote, unquote. But I don't think, I think that, you know, the benefits really tail off after about 1.6.
- [19:58]
Mike Haney
Well, that's, yeah, that's exactly where I wanted to go next. And kind of digging into that, that big meta analysis you guys did about five, six years ago, where I know you looked at a number, you looked at a lot of studies and a lot of different protocols over those studies. So, you know, just again, to kind of put it in real world terms, if we, if we take as a baseline that everybody should be doing some level of resistance training, what's the difference? Not necessarily in needs, but in what my body is doing with that, with that protein. Between somebody who's, say, doing two body weight workouts, 20 minutes, you know, at home, versus the gym, bro, who's doing, you know, CrossFit four times a week, if they're both taking in 1.6 grams per kilogram, what's happening differently in their body? And is one of those sufficient and the other one not?
- [20:41]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, so I think the answer to the question requires a Little bit of, you know, the explanation of you've used the terms already, muscle protein synthesis and breakdown. So the analogy I use when I'm teaching this to undergrads is to say, imagine that your muscle is. The tissue that we care about is like a brick wall. You know, one end of the wall, we're putting new bricks in. Those are the new amino acids going to make, you know, new net wall. But at the other end, there's another crew that's saying, all this bricks kind of damaged. We're going to chisel that one out. We can chisel this one out. And so, you know, there's constant, what we call turnover. So bricks going in, that's muscle protein synthesis. We're making new muscle proteins, bricks coming out. That's muscle protein breakdown. And so, you know, obviously more bricks going in than out. Then the wall gets bigger, more bricks going out than in. The wall gets smaller. But usually what's happening is those two processes are bouncing back and forth throughout the day, depending on when you eat and depending on. This is a big driver. And I think that this is a, you know, a really important point, that when you exercise, particularly when you lift weights, what you do is like, you give the brick builders, the bricklayers, you know, a kick in the pants and they just start accelerating the rate at which new bricks go into the wall. And so from that perspective, then, you know, somebody who's just, you know, sitting around, no big deal, nothing's happening, you know, 1.2 more than enough, like you're satisfying the brick builders, the brick breakers are, you know, turning over the wall, the wall staying in good shape. But as soon as you introduce exercise as a stressor and, you know, so a couple of body weight workouts, while you're kind of driving that synthesis side of things, you know, you're pushing up the, the rate at which the bricks go into the wall. So you eat some protein, more of that protein gets funneled into that process. And muscle. Then you go from, you know, somebody who's doing three pretty serious workouts and they're accelerating the, the synthesis side of the equation even more. And then you get into somebody who's doing Crossfit or Hyrox or something. So they're doing a lot of things. First of all, they're doing a lot of work for. And they're, you know, lifting as well, but they're burning amino acids because they're doing some aerobic work. And so it's not a great fuel for us to burn. The muscle prefers to burn Carbohydrates and fats, but it will burn protein. And if you're doing enough. And so runners even have increased protein requirements simply because they tend to break down and burn, oxidize for fuel protein. So, you know, the muscle is as a central role, the more you use it and determining what the fate of that protein that you ingest is. All the other tissues, unless you're growing when you're a kid, you know, you need protein to make bones bigger. You know, your brain's getting bigger, your heart's getting bigger, but after you're done growing, it's pretty much all about muscle up and then hopefully to a certain point at which you're trying to slow that downward trajectory. So, you know, everybody goes, what are you training for? Training not to age, you know, poorly, training to age well and try and, you know, just change the slope of that downward trajectory somewhat.
- [24:05]
Mike Haney
I think we've all heard the idea that, you know, when you lift weights to resistance training, you're essentially breaking down your muscles so that it can be built up more strongly. So is the, is that true and is there a kind of relationship then? If I'm somebody who is doing a lot of lifting, am I actually really increasing that, that muscle breakdown side, and that is what stimulates the brick layers on this side to, to put more in or, or not?
- [24:28]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, I, I, I, I. There's a partial truth to that. I mean, you do, when you lift weights, what you do is you stimulate not just the synthesis side, but you also stimulate the breakdown. So you accelerate the rate of turnover. So instead of sort of turning over like this, you, you know, it turns up. And, you know, that in and of itself is not a bad thing. Right? It's as if, you know, when you, like, the wall analogy is maybe a good one, is that, you know, a wall over time, if you just let it sit there, you know, it begins to break down, some of the cement comes out. But, you know, heck, we've got this crew that, you know, there's somebody slapping on cement and putting a new brick on on one end. Another guy's like, oh, that one's coming out, you know, so that allows for efficient maintenance and sort of, you know, upkeep of the wall. Or if it's a car engine is the other analogy that we use. It's like, you know, somebody's pulling up the hood and stripping down your car and building up the engine again every night. So it's, you know, it's like a Formula one race car. It gets broken down and put back together for every race and then shipped back and then shipped to wherever the next race is. So, you know, that's. That's not a bad thing, but it's mainly to do with driving the synthetic side of the equation. The truth is that the science of you're lifting weights and that's causing muscle breakdown, and so we're repairing the breakdown is partially true. And I think it sort of works. I mean, not to overcomplicate things. That's part of it. But it's really about just driving the synthetic side and then the breakdown side, just because of the, you know, a little bit of damage has to kind of come up to. To keep up and remodel the proteins rather than just create net accretion. And. And the other point that I make here, and, you know, we all know this, is that, you know, we say it's muscle, and it is, of course, but, you know, running throughout the muscle is this lattice of collagen. And then at the end, the lattice tapers down to become a tendon.
- [26:31]
Mike Haney
And.
- [26:31]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
And the tendon then goes from the muscle and attaches to the bone. And, you know, if we could figure out a way to more effectively repair connective tissue as we all get a little bit older, I wouldn't be talking to you from Hamilton, Ontario. I'd be talking to you from a beach, sipping, you know, all kinds of stuff. I mean, that's the key, you know, connective tissue remodels as well. And that's a, you know, that's. That's part of that. That probably gets, you know, damaged and broken down. And we're just not very good at making new connective tissue, particularly as we get older.
- [27:04]
Mike Haney
So there's a sort of what we might call a basal level. There's just. Even if I'm not an exercise or even if I don't ever think about protein, my muscles are turning over every day. It's just. It's just happening. You had some interesting stat and something I listened to, and I think maybe it wasn't even yours, but it was something around the idea of every so many days or months, you essentially have all new muscles. Yeah, yeah.
- [27:26]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
I'm smiling because I have a good friend and colleague named Luke Van Loon, and he's Dutch and he's a great friend, and he always. He doesn't always do it because. Because I make fun of him because he always has this thing. He goes, you know, look at your arm. And, you know, if you look at your arm and you could look at your muscles and, you know, 55 days you'd have a new muscle. And I'm probably doing a really poor imitation of his accent, but. No, no, he's an amazing researcher and, you know, but it's true. You, you've effectively replaced all of the protein in your muscle. Usually, let's say it's probably closer to about 80 days. But I mean, you, it's brand new. If you did the same thing with your, your gut, like looking at all the cells in your intestine, for example, it's almost brand new inside of a couple of weeks. That's how fast we're turning over proteins in those tissues.
- [28:17]
Mike Haney
Right? Yeah. And I feel like, you know, we've kind of heard that fun fact about other parts of the body in your cells that get turned over, but I hadn't really thought muscle side, you know, outside of, of that proactive, you know, weightlifting.
- [28:31]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Right.
- [28:31]
Mike Haney
With this idea that you're breaking it down and replacing it. But so there's a, there's a basal level that's happening sort of no matter what. And then, you know, you've talked about, you know, proteins as sort of substrate and, and exercise is really the stimulus. So when we think about what's going to goose that process, what's going to lead to more bricks being laid down, it is not simply eating more protein. So if I'm not being active, but I'm taking 150 grams of protein a day, I'm not going to suddenly start growing muscle.
- [28:59]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah. And, and, and, you know, this is the point. I mean, we, we've, we've done a couple of these big meta analyses now and, and we've looked at the data where, you know, people intervene with more protein and just give people more protein. And it does, it does nothing for muscle. It does nothing probably for any other tissue. Your, your body doesn't, you know, when it gets more protein, it's not like it goes, oh, you know, we're going to stock this away, that there's not a little place to put it. And you can say, well, muscles the reservoir. But if there's no drive to the muscle to, you know, put new amino acids in, make new bricks, make a better wall, and the wall's not turning over faster, then you're not going to gain more muscle simply by eating protein. And, and that's, you know, the recent revision of the US Dietary Guidelines and the protein range from 1.2 to my point is, is that should have come with a, you know, it's, it's good for people I would have said, you know, comma or semicolon. However, you know, you need to be exercising and specifically doing some weightlifting for, to take full advantage of that type of range to do, to do its job, to do what it would do for you to support, you know, the exercise, which is, you know, the analogy I've used, and Luke makes one of me for this one, is that the, you know, the lifting and the exercise bakes the cake, the protein ices the cake. And, and I think that that's probably an appropriate way of thinking about things.
- [30:36]
Mike Haney
Yeah. So, well, I mean, I think at the end we'll talk about sort of the takeaways, but just to jump ahead, I mean, one of the things I think you've been really consistent on is that maybe instead of obsessing about how much protein you're taking in, make sure you are exercising first. Because if you are, if you're lifting weights regularly but you're only getting sort of 50 grams of protein a day, you're still getting some benefit. You're maybe not getting maximum benefit that you might, if you take in, say, a hundred grams, again, depending on your weight, obviously. But the opposite is, is not true that if I am not exercising at all, but I go from 50 grams to a hundred grams of protein, I'm not really getting any effect there.
- [31:12]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
No, perfectly stated. I mean, I, I, I, I couldn't say it any simpler. I, you know, exercise, like if you had somebody goes, you know, you're stuck on a desert island and you've got tons of protein or you've got an exercise machine, and I'm like, take the exercise machine every time. Right. So it's, it's going to do a whole lot more for you. Yeah, you might be missing out on a, you know, some, a little bit of the gain because you didn't have the right protein. But you're going to be helping your muscle retain protein and you're going to be doing, you know, a ton of other good stuff for your health, otherwise the protein will never do. So, you know, I don't know how many interviews I've done since the, you know, the new recommendations for the guidelines came out, but everybody goes, so tell me your takeaway. And I said, well, in the absence of exercise, these new recommendations will not change anything so far as, you know, any chronic disease out there, like, it will not, it's not going to budge the needle. So, you know, the exercise is the, is the big driver, the protein, all good, don't get me wrong. But without Exercise, it's it. You're not going to use it for sure. You're definitely not going to gain muscle.
- [32:24]
Mike Haney
So one more thing on just the, the variability side of this, we focus a lot here on, on metabolic health and I cover a lot of glucose, insulin, that kind of thing. So I'm just curious if metabolic state is also a factor in this, you know, insulin being an anabolic hormone. And I know you've looked at this as well, but what's the relationship between say, my state of insulin resistance and my response to.
- [32:44]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, I mean, they're probably related, you know, resistance to insulin as it's classically defined. And you know, if you talk about it, your, your listeners would know this is that it's resistance to, you know, carbohydrate in terms of uptake into insulin sensitive tissues, muscle being one of the big sites and you know, adipose tissue and a few others being, you know, the, the other sort of remaining sites. There's probably a parallel analogy with respect to amino acid uptake into, into muscle and other tissues. So, you know, if you're insulin resistant, you are resistant to the effects of, you know, elevated amino acids in your blood after a protein meal. So, you know, I think that they share some of this similar sort of biochemistry, if you like. It's not completely analogous though. There is a phenomenon that comes with disuse or bed restrictions and aging, of which relative disuse could be a part or inactivity, that the muscle, you know, becomes resistant to amino acids very, very quickly. But it does, you know, insulin resistance sets in just as quick. So I think that, you know, the parallel is, is, is. Is worth noting for sure.
- [34:03]
Mike Haney
Well, yeah, that's, it's a good lead in, I think, to aging. And I know this is where you've also done a lot of work with your lab up there, working with a lot of older folks and trying to help people sort function. So let's just start there. Why is it that we get that anabolic resistance, that sort of less efficient muscle building as we age? Do we know the sort of evolutionary mechanism behind that?
- [34:25]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, so the last check, and you know, I don't work in aging per se, but you know, my read of mechanisms for aging, there's probably about 12 or 13 sort of proposed reasons why cells age. And then, you know, we're basically a collection of cells why we age as well. And all of those could be, you know, breaking down as we get older and contributing to this kind of what we call anabolic resistance, as you said. So at the same time, inactivity happens. And it doesn't like everybody goes, oh, but I go to the gym and everything else like that. And I'm fond of pointing out that from humans all the way down to, to, you know, earthworms, as we get older, we do less. And you know, they're obviously notable exceptions. There's some folks that are my age that are doing crazy amounts of activity, but on average people do less. Dogs, cats, if you have them, and they do less, they sit around more, they're less reluctant to go for a walk if it's a dog or something like that. They just don't have the same vigor as they did when they were younger there. It's exactly the same in people. I think that that's one of the big contributors to this age related anabolic resistance to amino acids and probably insulin resistance. Every now and again we will. We run trials in older people all the time and we advertise for people who are, you know, you can't get. Rarely do you get. But let's say every now and again we get one. It's somebody in their 70s walks in and we say, first question is, okay, so you're relatively healthy. What medications are you taking? And they say, none. And it's like, you know, the phone rings, it's like, we've got one down here. It's a unicorn. You know, not too many people like that around. And then, you know, you say, so what do you do? And it's like, oh, well, you know, I run down at the club and I got like four dogs. And you know, you give them a pedometer and they're taking 23,000 steps a day. And metabolically they look like their muscle looks like, and their metabolism looks like, you know, I don't want to pick on any individual faculty, but I'll say, you know, a med student during their residency. So I am picking on the faculty, I guess. But you know, because they, they're not getting sleep, they're, they're not getting a chance to exercise and, and you know, they're in there usually in their late 20s, early 30s. And so, you know, those individuals metabolically don't look too dissimilar from each other. So, you know, there's hope yet if you're, if you're getting older. But the amount that you have to do to sort of maintain that efficiency as you get older is the ramp goes up pretty steeply. And at a certain point, you know, aging wins, right? No matter how much activity you do, all those Other mechanisms. Just saying, you know, what. Cells breaking apart. Not. Not the same integrity. And that's probably contributing to this as well.
- [37:29]
Mike Haney
And also, I would imagine you mentioned earlier the fact that we do just tend to take in less food and therefore probably less protein. Dietary patterns just sort of change. And so. So. So there's a little bit of. Of just sort of natural lifestyle stuff that tends to happen. And then also a kind of physiological process in which our body is just simply getting less efficient at turning those amino acids into. Our bricklayers are getting tired or just not building that muscle as efficiently.
- [37:56]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
They're aging, too. They're aging, too. Yeah.
- [37:58]
Mike Haney
Is there an equivalent increase in catabolism? Are we breaking down muscle faster than we used to?
- [38:05]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, probably we are. I mean, there's phenomenon, you know, oxidative stress is the one probably a lot of people have heard about. We know with aging that the amount of oxidative stress that we're experiencing goes up. Our gene tend to get smaller because our chromosomes get shorter. There's enzymes that kind of chew at the end of our chromosomes, and they get shorter. There's other processes, you know, to do with energetics within the cell around, you know, if you've read Peter Atia's book Outlived and the mitochondria, you know, all of these things begin to. You know, it's sort of like when you. When you draw a picture, it's like this is the house, the way it looked when it was built, and here's the house 100 years later. You know, it's starting to show signs of wear and tear. No matter how good your crew on the outside is, you know, trying to repair it and do everything because, you know, everything tends towards entropy. It goes from order to disorder. And that's, you know, that's simply. That's a process of aging. And so probably lots of things are happening that we just can't. We lose the ability to, you know, defend against those sorts of things. It's not. Yeah. I mean, aging is inevitability, but the, you know, the emphasis on how you age is. Is that we can. There's a lot we can do there, obviously.
- [39:29]
Mike Haney
Yeah. What kinds of things can we do? And maybe, excuse me, starting. How early can we be, you know, doing things that are going to help us age as well as possible? If I'm a super fit, I feel like, you know, we've all seen people who are like, great athletes, young and then still kind of maintain that body throughout their life, or people who are really Active. My Dad's in his mid-80s, but he was a factory worker all his life, and so just very active. And he's in great shape for 85. And I'm convinced it's because he's in Minnesota, where it's cold, and I think that's a good stressor. And. And he's just been active all his life. And so without paying a lot of attention to the specifics of weightlifting or protein or anything like that. So is there anything to that? Sort of early and how early, you know, if I start working out in my 30s versus my 40s versus my 50s and building that muscle or making sure I'm getting adequate protein, how much can I push back against those sort of natural forces?
- [40:23]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I. I think, you know, the answer is, is. Is that probably the earlier you make the investment, you know, in quotation marks here, it pays off. It sort of compound interest in terms of, you know, so the grass we usually draw as you grow as a kid, and then you get to sort of this level in terms of, say, muscle mass, and then, you know, 30s, 40s, you begin to decline. I think you can delay that, I probably want to say, into your probably late 40s, early 50s. And then inevitably, you know, there's this downward slope. And I suppose the, you know, the easy way to say is that the more active activity you have and, you know, and. And to your point, we, you know, we talk, everybody goes, exercise. I'm like, yeah, exercise. But if you're just habitually physically active, it's. If it's part of your occupation, if you go back, you know, sort of 50 years, we were a lot more physically active as a group, you know, around the world, because we just did a lot more things. We didn't have machines to help us, and we didn't sit in front of a screen all day. So the bottom line is you could have a downward slope that goes like this, or you can have a downward slope that goes like this. Right. So the, you know, loss of muscle and the loss of function, the loss of mobility, etc. Etc. Could all be contributing to, you know, a poorer pattern in aging. But you want to hit that sort of peak, you know, muscle mass. Peak bone mass is the other variable. Women obviously should be very concerned about this because at some point it's going to, you know, menopause pause for women. It's going to kind of drop off. But what we do know is the higher you start, everybody, you know, so if you start down here, you're already closer to that threshold. And similarly, you know, if the trajectory is downwards and you're like this versus like that, and it seems like a really small or subtle. Well, the curves begin to diverge the older you are. And the theory is that you cross some sort of threshold and you can't do something in your life. And at that point your mobility goes down and your world becomes smaller, you don't do as much and, you know, then it becomes a bit of a spiral. Right. And baked into all of that equation is, you know, have a good circle of friends, eat well, sleep well, you know, and all these other things as well. But, you know, to my mind, when I give people a hierarchy of things that you can do for yourself to change that trajectory, trajectory to age better physical activity. Exercise is, is. Is top of the heap. And as you point out, they're just there, you know, some extraordinarily probably genetically gifted people who take full advantage of, you know, their ability to do things. And like, your dad didn't have to probably go to the gym, didn't really have to, but got up, was physically active. If he's living in Minnesota, he gets honorary Canadian status. He put up with winters as bad as ours up there. Even speak like Canadians, they just don't say A. At the end, it's like, hey, how's she going? I'm like, hey. You know, it's an interesting observation, right, that people who do these physically active jobs, yeah. They tend to have decent health as long as they don't have the, you know, the poor lifestyle stuff associated with it. And so you don't require exercise per se, but physical activity is key and core.
- [43:55]
Mike Haney
Yeah. And I think that, you know, I've heard you talk about this as well, that that may be partially what explains some of the blue zone stuff, is that the people in the quote, unquote, blue zones, to the extent we, we buy that as a concept, tend to live in hilly areas where they're just walking up hills a lot more.
- [44:09]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah. Like, you know, it's. I, I think I was talking about this with my group the other day and we were talking about blue zones. And I, you know, everybody goes, yeah, yeah. And we named all, you know, Loma Linda, California, Costa Rica, Sardinia, Okinawa. I'm like, have you seen pictures of those places? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, I don't know. I'd like to live to 90 if I lived in those places too. I mean, you know, but your, Your point? It's it's almost like something like a. Like a huge hill down to the. The water and then people walk up and down it. There's not, you know, it's not massive. It's not like everybody goes to the, you know, the local gym and lifts every day, but. But they are tremendously physically active and have been so for a large portion of their lives. So I think that as much as you buy into the blue zone concept, and it's been dismantled a little bit recently, but I think the ethos of the message is that these people are very physically active, for sure.
- [45:04]
Mike Haney
You mentioned menopause a minute ago. And I want to kind of dig into the hormone side because I think this comes out in two different ways. Right. On the male side, there is the natural drop in testosterone and, you know, take that all the way out. People taking replacement testosterone to either get healthy again or to build lots of muscle. On the female side, you get. I think there's a belief that the drop in estrogen that comes with the menopause transition is partially what contributes to a muscle loss. I think I've heard you say that that doesn't really. The estrogen as the cause doesn't really bear out in the literature. And at the same side that taking extra testosterone is not really bearing out in terms of making you not just build more muscle, but sort of use protein more efficiently. So maybe talk about what are the roles of those two hormones in terms of the aging effect and muscle maintenance.
- [45:55]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot to unpack there. But I'll just sort of start out by saying that if we ranked hormones with respect to what we call their androgenicity, so androgenic hormones are hormones that, you know, are anabolic for muscles. And, you know, right at the top of the heap would obviously be testosterone. When we look and compare the two main then female hormones, because females have, you know, tenfold less testosterone than men. They've got estrogen and progesterone. Progesterone is folds lower, but it's actually a little more anabolic than estrogen. Estrogen is. Is lower down for muscle. Now everybody goes, what about bone? And I'm like, estrogen is super good for bone, but not as much for muscle. Then, you know, my point has been. And this upsets a lot of people who have a different interpretation, but, you know, mine's based, I think, on. On data when you look across a population of women, 95% of whom will go through menopause between the ages of basically 45 and 55, that's that's when 95% of women have lost their menstrual cycle. And so 55 plus they're postmenopausal. It's not like there's a, like a big downward deflection in muscle mass. There is in bone mass, because estrogen is remarkably potent anabolically for bone. Men don't have that precipitous drop because with age their testosterone declines gradually, generally. So as you point out, you can get a level of testosterone that puts you in this, what we call hypogonadal range. And then clinically, you could take testosterone replacement therapy. The more vogue thing now is, well, I'm just going to keep myself up to at this level because a, I, I feel good when I do it. Generally my libido is better during, you know, when I'm taking testosterone replacement therapy. But if you're lifting weights, then you can advantage of that higher testosterone and retain a little bit more muscle. What we don't find is when we give women menopausal hormone replacement therapy that they retain more muscle, they might retain a little bit more strength. And the indirect mechanism, and this has been brought up to me by several women, including my wife, is that, you know, menopausal hormone therapy takes away a lot of the symptoms that remove a woman's agency to be able to, you know, think about doing exercise instead of having brain fog and, you know, hot flashes and poor sleep and everything. So I buy that as a secondary, you know, hormonal mechanism. So it's a sort of more of a behavioral one. But I don't think that there's good data to show that the loss of estrogen during the menopausal transition is associated with some sort of precipitous decline. And I've heard, you know, influencers say, oh, you lose, you know, three, four times as much. And I'm like, well, 45 to 55 is 10 years of normal aging. So in a decade of aging, we would expect around an 8 to 10% loss in most muscle in that phase of life. And that's exactly what we see. There is no downward bend. There is data to show that women do lose a little bit of strength in there. So there could be some neuromuscular consequences to the decline in estrogen. So I think that that's, you know, if you want another reason why you should be lifting weights. First, it's great for bone. Second, that menopausal transition is, you know, I mean, it's hell on wheels looking from the outside in, watching My wife go through it, and maybe resistance exercise is something that pushes back against a lot of these adverse metabolic, but particularly musculoskeletal issues that a lot of women suffer from.
- [50:15]
Mike Haney
I just want to touch briefly on. We've been talking a lot about protein in its relationship to muscle. But you mentioned early on that protein does a lot of other things, things in the body. So I just want to talk, you know, briefly about its relationship to some other things. We've talked a lot about bone and how important it is for bone, maybe talk about muscles and kidneys, because I think this is the other thing that people might hear a lot about in the world. And we, you know, we had a nephrologist on a while ago, and, you know, he didn't go as far as saying, you know, protein is poison for your kidneys. But I think his point of view is if you're somebody who has chronic kidney damage, if you're. If you're leaking towards sort of kidney disease, you might want to be careful about it. So what's the relationship between kidneys and protein intake?
- [50:55]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, so probably about 60 years ago, a guy named Barry Brunner, who is a nephrologist, did a lot of work mostly in animal models showing that protein, the more you ate of, creates urea, is the substrate that mammals produce to excrete excess nitrogen from protein. And the theory was, is that the more protein you consume, the more urea you produced. And that effectively, over time, kind of wore the kidney out. And the kidney began to, you know, have trouble filtering the substrates that it usually filters. And urea, basically one of the primary ones. And so protein was a causative agent in progression of kidney disease and then eventually leading to kidney failure. We're 60 years past the hypothesis, and there's been lots of research done in humans and in animals. But let's focus on the human data that we've looked for, my group and several others, to say that that causative role is actually true. And for causation, we need to have an intervention to show that something's true. The other way is to look at association. And that's observational science, and we'll get into that. But from a protein intervention standpoint, the high protein, as you age, being causative for kidney failure, there's no evidence that that's the case. Observationally, I think the evidence would be best summarized as being mixed, leaning towards null, like we can't find it. And so there's some sort of. My takeaway is that over 60 years, post hypothesis, post theory, and we still don't have the data. The common pushback is, well, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. And I'm like, true, but it's been 60 years and I'm looking for the smoking gun. You know, it's not like cigarettes and cancer. We got that one. It took us a while, right? And tobacco companies pushed back hard. But, you know, there's no one out there on big protein trying to block, you know, publication of trials indicating a causative role. So, you know, I'm of the opinion that, and the nephrologist that you've had on may disagree. But when you go to clinics that people are like dialysis clinics, the vast majority of the folks that are there, not everybody, but a lot of them have type 2 diabetes. They have definitely have hypertension. And you know, those as sort of causative issues for kidney failure would be, you know, higher on my list than a lifetime of habitually higher protein intake. But to the point you made and that your nephrologist guest made, if you have poor kidney function, then a higher protein diet is probably not a, you know, a recommended thing for you because you're just making more urea that the kidney has to filter. And we know its function is reduced, so we're trying to sort of, you know, keep it going. But I'm going to say this, and this is absolutely true, is that if you're somebody with poor kidney function, one of the best things you can do, and you know, what I'm going to say, is to be physically active and particularly to be resistance training because kidney failure patients lose muscle like crazy because they're on a low protein diet because that, that's preserving kidney function and they're remarkably inactive. But we've got trial data now showing that the retention of muscle in these folks is drastically improved if they lift weights. So we come back to the same message again.
- [55:02]
Mike Haney
All right, well, let's end with some kind of practical takeaways around this and maybe I'll start here. We had your friend Chris Gardner on the show, and one of Dr. Gardner's points around protein that stuck with me was if we look at the survey data, most people are getting 1.2 to 1.6 grams already. And so is all of this moot? Do the, the whole sort of like you should. I mean, I'll say, you know, from my role as a, as an educator and a journalist, the message I've been pushing the past few years is you should probably take in a little Bit more than you are. You should probably pay more attention to it. And now I'm starting to question whether or not that's true. And if, look, there's only so many things people can focus on and should we just take protein more or less off the table and say put your energy instead towards less sugar, more fiber or, or other things and just kind of not really worry about protein. How much do you buy that we're all getting enough already.
- [55:57]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
I'm smiling because, you know, Christopher's a good friend. We always have a spirited conversation I'll call it when we get together. Lots of respect for, for Christopher. He, he's, you know, really accomplished scientist in his own right. One of the things that I always say and he uses the NHANES data so basically a large scale US survey to point out that most people are getting enough. I think that he is probably right when you're talking about men. I think men consume more protein on a per kg body weight basis than do women. And I think he's probably right in most kind of if most is 50% plus one people under the age of 50, once you get a little bit older and if you're female, I think that the most part begins to become an issue. But as I said before, you know, simply consuming more protein is probably not going to help. The exercise part definitely helps. Is it an issue for a lot of people, particularly young, you know, university age males? We have about 16,000 of them on campus here. So no, it's probably not an issue for a lot of the females on campus. It could be particularly food restriction. You know, we've got a generation of Canadians and Americans now taking GLP1s so basically massively reduced appetite. It could be an issue. You. But as I said to Chris one time and I think I shocked him a little bit with this, I'm like 80% to 90% of the benefit the protein provides you basically is baked in by doing exercise. The rest is a protein mediated effect. He was like hold on because I got to record that. And we sort of gone on from there. Christopher's argument about, you know, we need to focus more on, on dietary fiber, I would never disagree. My point would be, is that I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Like it's not like we can't have a higher protein intake focusing on nutrient dense foods. So Greek style yogurt, eggs, you know, lean meats, even plant based proteins, tofu, et cetera, et cetera, legumes, that sort of thing and get more fiber at the same time. So legumes, they're a fine source of protein. 25 years ago, Stu Phillips would have told you something different. But everything that we've studied since with plant proteins compared to animal proteins suggests that as opposed to the score difference which looks impressive and that, you know, the average punter on Instagram can cite like that they say look at the, the protein scores. And I'm like, look at the physiological reality and the differences is much, much smaller. So you know, I don't think our goals are, are too different. Christopher has a, obviously his line of argument and reasoning, he's much more plant focused. He's, he's a plant focused guy in terms of what he eats as well. I'm a dyed in the wool omnivore, so maybe that colors are our perception of the problem. But he has a point and I would agree in large part with what he says. But the most label is like, it's not a non issue that I would wave away, but it's not an issue that I think is so prevalent that we need protein water, protein pop tarts, protein cereal and another freaking protein bar. Like there's a, I don't know how many like, you know, go to the like 200 and then somebody goes, we're coming out with a new protein bar. I'm like, seriously? That's about as unoriginal as, you know, because it's just capitalizing on, you know, everybody's obsession with protein right now. So Chris was right. Our, our obsession with protein has sort of gone over the top top. But I don't think it's mutually exclusive as you know, you can get it all through real food. And I think Christopher would agree with that.
- [60:18]
Mike Haney
Yeah, I mean that's where all the conversations that we have kind of come back to you know, eat real food. And I, and I think it is
- [60:26]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
and so protein bars and I just want everybody to think about, you know, they go, oh, I take this protein by this. I'm like, there's the, the massive gmech, to use a great Yiddish word of gamach, gamish. I don't know what it is of ingredients that is, it's the living definition of ultra processed. So you know, you pick them, I just choose real food first.
- [60:49]
Mike Haney
So if they're just to further on this sort of crazy, you know, world we live in with all these protein enhanced products. I take the point that a protein pop tart, which I think is hilarious that such a thing exists, the, the, the addition of protein is not making that Pop tart. Good for you. If I take something like protein popcorn, right? And popcorn's not the worst thing as far as processed foods. It's pretty simple. If I'm gonna buy a bag of popcorn anyway, is there anything wrong with getting my protein, getting an extra 10 grams of protein via a protein popcorn? Or if we wanna go all the way out, let's just say a, a healthy, well formulated protein supplement. Is there any additional benefit to the food matrix to, to taking that, that protein in through an egg, through a legume, through a piece of meat, as opposed to a powder or something sprinkled on my popcorn?
- [61:41]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it sort of hones in on the, you know, the emphasis on whole food and real food. You know, when I talk to athletes here and we teach usually young men to shop, we say shop around the outside of the grocery store and avoid the aisles right in there. You know, so you do the average grocery cart and it's like produce, meats, dairy, and then grains down the other side. I think that that's a good way to sort of unpack that. Whole foods probably have a lot of things going for them, not the least of which is we talk about nutrient density. So, you know, there's lots of other things in your diet that you need. You need calcium, you need vitamin D, you need, need potassium, you need all the B vitamins. You get those from whole foods. So I think that there's probably something in the food matrix. And we've, you know, we've made a lot of mistakes nutritionally focusing on individual nutrients as being the reason why, say, diets high in fruits and vegetables were good because, and, you know, lycopene for prostate cancer, because men who ate more tomatoes that have more lycopene, and then you do the trials and lo and behold, it does nothing. So maybe there's something special about the tomato and the food matrix or lots of other examples to do with antioxidant vitamins that are, you know, the food is just better than the isolated nutrient. Now, you mentioned protein powders, and they fall in a slightly different category only because they're the isolated nutrient away from anything else. So, you know, you have to appreciate. And if somebody said, well, I, you know, I do 10 scoops of protein powder and water and nothing else on me, well, that's not a good idea. But they can be a way of getting more protein into, you know, a diet. If you're just like, you know, I don't have the time, I don't have the resources, so they're convenient. And I think that that's a, you know, a reasonable argument to use. But the long and short is, is that, you know, food first should always be the way that you think. And we just don't understand some of the food matrix effects that you're talking about. And I think that we're, we're beginning to pull back some of that now with better methodology. And everything that we do suggests that the, you know, the food is probably ultimately going to be better for you than the isolated nutrients that it provides.
- [64:19]
Mike Haney
If we're just comparing, let's set aside the sort of processed foods for a minute. But, you know, eating a steak versus taking a protein powder. From the perspective of my bricklayers, if we go back to our analogy, they don't really care. It's the same amino acids that are coming in.
- [64:32]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, they wouldn't like. And this is the sort of the plant protein argument is that, you know, I say plant versus animal and people go, oh, yeah, but, you know, plant proteins are. And I'm like, your body doesn't know any difference, like lifting a weight when people go, this is better than this. I'm like, your body doesn't know the difference between a kettlebell and a dumbbell. Like, it just doesn't like. It's, it's just, it's just a piece of lead. Right. So proteins are composed of individual amino acids, and as long as they get in the bloodstream and you get enough of them, your body, body could care less where it came from. There are differences within proteins obviously, in scoring and certain proteins. Collagen is a great example as a rife supplement these days that has a protein quality score of zero. Like, it's just efficient in one essential amino acid. So, you know, a lot of protein from collagen in your diet is effectively diluting all of the other good proteins. But, you know, back to your, your point, as long as you're getting the protein sources in there and it has all of what we call the essential amino acids, which we can't make and those bricklayers, you know, need to have, then it doesn't matter where they come from.
- [65:43]
Mike Haney
We'll just do a quick lightning round on a couple other things I wanted to, to hit on in terms of practical takeaways that I know you've talked about protein and satiety. Is it, is it more satiating? Is it good for me if I'm trying to lose weight? Is eating the steak going to fill me up more than, than Eating a carb heavy meal.
- [66:00]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, some people disagree. I think that effect, if it's there, is over overrated. The effects are small.
- [66:09]
Mike Haney
How about timing? So I've heard you say we do not need to carry our protein shaker to the gym and chug it between sets. I like the analogy of the garage door versus the window. So maybe you can explain sort of how much does it matter when we take in our protein to get our muscle building effect.
- [66:25]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, look, I gotta give credit to Sean Arendt, good friend of mine at University of South Carolina, for the garage door analogy. He wrote a paper with that title, you know, the. The Anabolic Garage Door of Opportunity, as opposed to the Anabolic Window. Yeah, it, you know, look, timing. You got a different answer from me 15, 20 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago. Far less important than we think. I won't spoil the data, but we'll roll out some data in 2026 that will show you that it's really unimportant. So just get your protein within the day, that, you know, the hours that you're awake, lift your weights, and you're all good to go.
- [67:08]
Mike Haney
You mentioned on that point, and I just was reading this this morning, so it's sort of top of mind. But I think it was your 2014 paper. You had a sentence that was like, there's an intriguing hypothesis around the idea that 24 hours post workout might actually be a period of. Of better efficiency for amino acid transport. Did that hypothesis bear out? Do we now know that there is something special about 24 hours post workout?
- [67:31]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
No.
- [67:32]
Mike Haney
Okay,
- [67:34]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
but, you know, the garage door, you know, everybody says you do your workout, and this is the windows here. And that window concept came pretty much from restoration of glycogen, so stored carbohydrate. And everybody said, well, the protein window is sort of the same. And most of that data came from rodents. And then when we did humans. Now the window is. It is. It's the garage door. It's huge. Right? So I think, you know, immediately post and up to 24 hours, you're not losing anything. If you, you know, you had to skip, you know, you're like, oh, I gotta go to this. And, you know, I'm drinking a coffee and everybody's like, oh, you're losing the advantage. And I'm like, no way. Not. Not a chance. Like, maybe if you're those people, you know, in Milano, Cortina, the Winter Olympics, and, you know, that last little margin, you could argue, but for most mere mortals, that is not a big deal. At all.
- [68:28]
Mike Haney
And the last one that I know your lab has also done work on, which is amount of protein taken at a time. There's a kind of common idea you can't use more than 20 or 30 grams, so don't, don't concentrate it all in one meal. What have we learned about, about sort of protein dosage over the day?
- [68:46]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, definitely it's, it's probably, it's definitely more than 20 or 30. I don't know that it's more than about 40 at a given meal. I won't spoil the surprise, but I'm far less hard on the amount of protein that you take in, in a meal as I once was. I'm probably, I don't like to spoil too much because it's two students who did the work. It's really, it's really cool, really interesting data and they should be the ones to bask in the spotlight when, when all the data comes out. But let's just say I don't think that that's a big issue as much as I once thought that it was.
- [69:26]
Mike Haney
So I guess this sort of relates to our, our, you know, garage door point that whether you take in your protein and sort of evenly space meals throughout the day or whether it tends to be a little bit more concentrated at say, breakfast, which may. Would recommend, other than sort of dinner, where we tend to, at least in the west, have it not, not a big difference there.
- [69:44]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
I don't think so.
- [69:45]
Mike Haney
Okay, great. Well, I think that's, I think we've, we've dispelled a lot of myths here, so I think we'll, we'll wrap it up there. But.
- [69:51]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
Well, hopefully dispelled myths and got some truisms in there as well, so. But yeah, social media, you can, you can, you can find whatever answer you want on social media, no problem. Yeah, you find somebody to support it and then somebody to refute it and.
- [70:05]
Mike Haney
Yeah, yeah, and we'll, we'll definitely put the links in the show notes because I do encourage people to follow your social media. You are an active educator out there pushing back against the misinformation. So if people, people want to know, they should, they should check that out. So. Dr. Steward Farups, thanks so much for joining us.
- [70:19]
Dr. Stuart Phillips
My pleasure, Mike. Thanks for having me on the show.