Why Protein Isn’t Always Enough: Anabolic Resistance, Obesity, and Protein Efficiency | Dr. Nick Burd - The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show

Summary4 min read

Episode Summary: "Why Protein Isn’t Always Enough: Anabolic Resistance, Obesity, and Protein Efficiency | Dr. Nick Burd"

Hosted by Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, this episode features Dr. Nicholas Byrd, a leading expert in muscle metabolism and obesity. Together, they delve deep into the complexities of anabolic resistance, protein efficiency, and the nuanced interplay between diet, exercise, and muscle health.

1. Introduction to Anabolic Resistance [00:00 – 02:02]

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon kicks off the episode by addressing common questions surrounding muscle building, particularly challenging assumptions about vegan diets and protein intake. She highlights that "protein synthesis isn't just about what you eat. It's about when you eat it and how efficiently your body absorbs it" ([00:00]). Introducing Dr. Nicholas Byrd, she sets the stage for a discussion that will unravel why "protein isn’t always enough" when it comes to building and maintaining muscle, especially in the context of obesity and aging.

2. Defining Anabolic Resistance [02:02 – 04:38]

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon ([02:15]): "What is anabolic resistance?"

Dr. Nicholas Byrd ([02:15]): "It's this overarching frame word where anytime you encounter anabolic stimuli, so usually exercise or nutrition, your muscle in particular doesn't respond as well."

Dr. Byrd explains anabolic resistance as the muscle's diminished response to anabolic stimuli like exercise and nutrition. He emphasizes that this concept is especially pertinent in individuals with obesity, where excess fat mass leads to a "blunted anabolic response" to protein intake ([03:54]). Unlike aging, where prior activity levels influence muscle responsiveness, in obesity, the issue is more intrinsic to the muscle itself.

3. Muscle Protein Synthesis Methodologies [05:00 – 07:01]

Dr. Byrd delves into the intricacies of measuring muscle protein synthesis, distinguishing between myofibrillar and mitochondrial fractions. He notes that anabolic resistance in obesity predominantly affects the myofibrillar fraction, which is crucial for muscle force generation ([06:23]). This fraction is less responsive to protein intake in obese individuals, pointing to a "quality problem" rather than a mere quantitative one.

4. Mechanisms Behind Anabolic Resistance [07:02 – 14:32]

Dr. Byrd explores the underlying mechanisms of anabolic resistance, highlighting issues like poor capillary supply and impaired mTOR signaling within muscle cells. He states, "They [obese muscles] are struggling to get the nutrients there" ([35:05]), indicating that nutrient delivery is compromised. Additionally, intramuscular adipose tissue may interfere with anabolic signaling ([13:35]), further exacerbating the resistance.

5. Critique of Protein RDA and Intake Recommendations [14:32 – 93:05]

A significant portion of the discussion critiques the current Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein, arguing that it is merely a starting point designed to prevent deficiency rather than optimize muscle synthesis for specific populations like weightlifters or older adults.

Dr. Nicholas Byrd ([91:05]): "The protein RDA is a starting point."

He challenges the prevalent notion that higher protein intake universally leads to better muscle outcomes, emphasizing that in obese individuals, "feeding more and more food protein" doesn't address the core issue of anabolic resistance. Instead, focusing on consistency with resistance exercise can enhance protein efficiency and improve muscle quality ([14:20]).

6. The Role of Food Matrix in Muscle Protein Synthesis [93:06 – 104:25]

Dr. Byrd introduces the concept of the food matrix, referring to the physical structure of foods and their nutrient interactions. He shares findings where whole foods like eggs and salmon "potentiated the anabolic response more effectively" than isolated proteins, despite having similar macronutrient contents ([101:12]). However, he also notes that highly processed, lipid-dense foods like ground meat can impair the anabolic response compared to lean sources ([102:18]).

This highlights the importance of not just protein quantity but how proteins and other nutrients are integrated within the food matrix, affecting their utilization and impact on muscle protein synthesis.

7. Vegan vs. Animal-Based Diets in Muscle Synthesis [85:42 – 111:05]

The conversation shifts to comparing vegan and animal-based diets. Dr. Byrd discusses studies showing that plant-based meals, even when protein-dense, may not elicit the same anabolic response as animal-based meals. To counteract this, he explores the use of enzyme supplementation to enhance nutrient release and amino acid availability in plant-based diets, aiming to overcome the anabolic resistance observed in obese individuals ([55:37]).

8. Future Directions and Interventions [111:04 – End]

Looking ahead, Dr. Byrd emphasizes the need for personalized nutrition and exercise interventions to address anabolic resistance. He advocates for interdisciplinary collaborations and precision nutrition approaches to better tailor strategies for enhancing muscle protein efficiency in diverse populations.

Notable Quotes:

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon ([00:00]): "Protein synthesis isn't just about what you eat. It's about when you eat it and how efficiently your body absorbs it."
Dr. Nicholas Byrd ([02:15]): "Anytime you encounter anabolic stimuli, your muscle in particular doesn't respond as well."
Dr. Nicholas Byrd ([03:54]): "Anabolic resistance doesn't take extremely clever individuals to think of a maneuver to make better use of food protein—exercise is one of the easiest solutions."
Dr. Nicholas Byrd ([35:05]): "We can't get MTOR up to that hub very well."
Dr. Nicholas Byrd ([91:05]): "The protein RDA is a starting point."
Dr. Nicholas Byrd ([101:12]): "Eating whole eggs potentiated the anabolic response more so than eating an ISO nitrogenous amount of egg white."

Conclusion:

This episode sheds light on the multifaceted nature of muscle protein synthesis and the concept of anabolic resistance, particularly in obesity and aging. Dr. Byrd challenges conventional wisdom around protein intake, emphasizing the quality and efficiency of protein utilization over sheer quantity. The discussion underscores the importance of consistency in resistance training and the complex interplay between diet, food matrix, and muscle health. For anyone striving to optimize muscle health—whether as an athlete, a midlife individual, or someone managing obesity—this episode offers invaluable insights that transcend popular dietary trends.

If you're aiming to deepen your understanding of muscle metabolism and optimize your health strategies, this episode is a must-listen!

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Transcript773 lines

[00:00]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Is it ideal to build muscle on a vegan diet? Does protein timing actually matter? And why does gaining muscle seem so hard even when you're training consistently and eating enough muscle? Protein synthesis isn't just about what you eat. It's about when you eat it and how your body, the efficiency, absorbs it. How your hormones, your gut and your body composition can change the entire equation. D Dr. Nicholas Byrd is one of the world's leading experts in muscle metabolism, especially obesity. How age and dietary patterns reshape the body's ability to build and maintain muscle. His research challenges a lot of assumptions. That plant based diets can't support strength. That protein timing doesn't matter, that more protein always equals better results. In today's episode, you'll learn how to how obesity and aging change your response to protein. Whether protein distribution across meals actually matters. Why food combinations, not just food sources, can boost muscle protein synthesis. And the truth about plant based muscle building from a leading scientist who studies it. If you're an athlete or a midlife woman, or just someone who wants to age with strength, this episode is for you. Because muscle isn't just about aesthetics. It's your metabolic body armor and the way you feed it matters more than ever. So if you're eating enough protein but still not seeing results, the question isn't just how much, it's how well your body is using it. Let's break down what it really takes to make protein work for you with Dr. Nicholas Bird. Dr. Nicholas Nick Bird. I'm so excited to have you on. I have been following your work for years. That's right. I have like celebrity sitting here.
[02:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, that's me. Yeah, I'm a celebrity. I always say corn fed.
[02:06]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Corn fed Passion for practical nutrition research, which I have read in your bio. And my first question is what is anabolic resistance?
[02:15]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It's just, you know, it's this overarching frame word where you know, anytime you encounter anabolic stimuli, so usually exercise or nutrition, your muscle in particular doesn't respond as well. And usually when we're thinking anabolic resistance in the literature, it's anabolic resistance of muscle protein synthesis. And some get mad when you don't put the muscle protein synthesis in front of it because they're like, you know, what are you talking about? Glycogen synthesis? No, we're talking about muscle. So it's always important that we do. Yeah.
[02:45]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Say muscle is obese, muscle more resistant to training.
[02:52]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
More resistant to like exercise training. Yeah, I mean, you know, so you know, when we're Thinking about this, it's always, always say, you know, there's, I don't always say it. People say this is not, it's in the science, you know, this concept of anabolic resistance.
[03:07]
Julia
Right.
[03:07]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Is it real, is it not?
[03:09]
Julia
Right.
[03:10]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Some would argue in aging it's isn't real. Your muscle doesn't know whether it's 65, 70, 80 years old. It just knows whether it's been active or not beforehand. You know, with anabolic resistance of obesity, you know, we spent a lot of time thinking about this and you know, the office solution. Yeah. So some of our original work showed that when you feed a big bolus of food protein, so 36 grams of food protein to obese people, overweight people or young, lean, lean adults. We prefer to use the term healthy weight. So healthy weight adults, we saw that the people with excess fat mass or adiposity didn't respond as well.
[03:54]
Julia
Right.
[03:55]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So an anabolic resistance, you know, it doesn't take extremely clever individual to think, you know, what's a maneuver that we could do to try to help make better use of that food protein.
[04:08]
Julia
Right.
[04:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And one of the easiest solutions is exercise.
[04:10]
Julia
Right?
[04:10]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yes.
[04:11]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so we did a follow up study. You know, I was like, ah, easy, you know, we can go overcome anabolic resistance of obesity. Just do some prior exercise. Eat usually takes care of it with aging as well. So we did that, we ran a study, we just tried to kickstart the muscle with exercise and the participants ate that same bolus. And what we noted was that, darn it, they were still in anabolic resistance.
[04:39]
Julia
Right.
[04:40]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So we couldn't kick start the muscle with prior exercise and then.
[04:44]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Which would normally work.
[04:45]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Normally it works for aging. So we were the first to try in that kind of acute setting in a beast muscle. Bettina Mittendorfer did some things earlier, before I did.
[04:58]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I love Bettina, she's a little tall.
[05:00]
Julia
But I. Yeah, yeah, she's.
[05:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, she's, you know, I have a few science heroes. She's one of them along with Stu, Luke and you know, Dawn. These are all individuals who inspired my career. But the interesting part, so when we look at anabolic resistance of muscle protein synthesis. Right. So what we can do. So usually a lot of people just look at mixed muscle. So in the laboratory we can take, you know, muscle biopsy and then homogenize it or smush it up and then, you know, you got some options at that point.
[05:32]
Julia
Right.
[05:33]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So you can either just hydrolyze that mixed muscle fraction and look at global protein synthesis so that's the collective measurement of all the proteins in that muscle. Or, or we can do a fractionation procedure. And this is where it's really important when we're thinking about anabolic resistance. So we can take that piece of muscle, use differential centrifugation. And what we do is we start to separate the different proteins in that muscle based on their size. So the big heavy myofibrillar proteins we can pull out, we can do that with a slow speed spin. And then so we can look at myofibrillar protein synthesis, then we do some high speed spins and look at mitochondrial protein synthesis, we can look at collagen protein synthesis, and then we can look at sarcoplismic protein synthesis. And the question is why it's important is all these fractions within muscle, are they experiencing anabolic resistance?
[06:23]
Julia
Right.
[06:23]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And even with aging, usually where you see anabolic resistance is more so on that myofibrillar fraction. And the myofibrillar proteins are like actin myosin, the things that are important for forming a cross bridge.
[06:37]
Julia
Right.
[06:37]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So we need to take actin myosin, connect actin form across bridge to generate force. So it's those big force producing units within your skeletal muscle. And the interesting part about the myofibrillar fraction is it makes up most of your skeletal muscle proteins. And so it makes sense that it's really generally responsive to exercise and nutrition because it's the biggest reservoir we have a dietary amino acids in our, in our bodies.
[07:01]
Julia
Right.
[07:01]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So during times of catabolic stress, we can pull on it. And that's normally where we see anabolic resistance is in that fraction. And that's normally where we see it with obesity. So we didn't see any issues on the mitochondrial fraction. Where we saw the problems were on the myofibrillar fraction. And where I was leading to was that. So we tried to kickstart the muscle, right? In the obese muscle, fed them food protein. Just thinking like doing prior exercise, we're overcome anabolic resistance.
[07:31]
Julia
Right.
[07:32]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Kickstart the anabolic signaling molecules in there. Maybe get.
[07:35]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
So you're measuring mtor?
[07:36]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I always collaborate. So, you know, this is for the science nerd.
[07:41]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
So let me frame up this question, okay. Because we have never, believe it or not, we've never talked about, you know, in the studies and I think that we take it for granted. It just says muscle protein synthesis or fractional muscle protein synthesis or myofibular muscle or protein synthesis. But there are multiple components to that tissue.
[08:03]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Sure, yeah. And we can fractionate it. And they're. Each fraction is going to be a little different in terms of how they're responding, responding to nutrition and exercise stimulus. Okay. So keep in mind that somewhat all the fractions are going to be synthesis to food because they undergo remodeling.
[08:17]
Julia
Right.
[08:18]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But you might see a bigger interaction on certain fractions with food intake or protein intake in particular than others. Or maybe like for the mitochondrial fraction, sometimes it likes a little insulin with the amino acids to, to help help that fraction push. But again, in the anabolic resistance we noted with obesity, with that exercise approach, the interesting part of that was what we saw was that, you know, so we couldn't kickstart the myofibrillar fraction. It appeared those amino acids wanted to stay in that sarcoplysmic fraction.
[08:54]
Julia
Right.
[08:55]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So we couldn't, for some reason they're residing in that sarcoplysmic fraction, which is like, you know, that's where all the anabolic signaling molecules hang out, hangs out, glycolysis, all that stuff. So we'd want to get them into that Myer for Briller fraction. And it's just not, it just didn't work.
[09:12]
Julia
Right.
[09:13]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And it could be a problem with mtor.
[09:14]
Julia
Right.
[09:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
We don't know a lot with mtor, which is, you know, for your listeners, is just classically described as the master regulator of proteins.
[09:23]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And I love that you're a teacher because teaching, that's really why people are listening.
[09:27]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, yeah. It's a memorial target of rapamycin. And so some of the work from Blake Rasmussen. Who's that here? He was here, yeah, he changed. He was at Galveston. Now he's is in Houston.
[09:40]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
He's in San Antonio now.
[09:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, he did some of the seminal work showing when you, you block in torn humans, you sort of shut off the obligatory stimulation of muscle protein synthesis. So eat rapamycin, then you exercise.
[09:58]
Julia
Right.
[09:59]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And then it blunts protein synthesis. Eat rapamycin, you exercise, you blunt the feeding induced rise and muscle protein synthesis. So it, it appeared to be real important. But you know, when we add, you know, so a lot of people, when they're studying mtor, right. We just use a generic western blotting approach. So you're just trying to understand whether a protein is added, is getting a phosphate added onto it.
[10:26]
Julia
Right.
[10:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So when you add a phosphate to a protein based on that technology, we really don't understand it, but we think that protein is going to be activated.
[10:34]
Julia
Right.
[10:35]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so what probably is more Realistic. You know, this is some work from Dr. Dan Moore up in Toronto. He's sort of showing the location of mtor, where it's at in the muscle cell really matters.
[10:47]
Julia
Right.
[10:47]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So MTOR is normally sprinkled around the muscle cell and then upon a stimulation that can move, translocate to particular parts of the membrane.
[10:58]
Julia
Right.
[10:58]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So in the case of, you know, when we're trying to overcome anabolic resistance, we'd want to get MTOR up to the sarcolemma, or the outer membrane of a muscle cell, because why? That's where all the nutrients are coming in.
[11:10]
Julia
Right.
[11:11]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So now we got. So we call that the hub, and that's probably one side of anabolic resistance for obese muscle, is that we can't get that MTOR up. Up to that. Up to that membrane.
[11:22]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And that makes a lot of sense. And there are. I definitely want to touch on the. There's a handful of mechanisms as to why.
[11:29]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Sure.
[11:29]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And before we do, I want to frame up what I think is so fascinating about your work. And I think the first time that you actually published on obesity and anabolic resistance, it must have been 10 years ago, was it?
[11:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I'm old.
[11:42]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Oh, yeah. Looking good for old. But it was so fascinating because in clinical practice, what I was seeing was that when someone was obese, I couldn't figure out why. I just wasn't seeing that. Again, this is anecdotal. I was very early on in my career, I couldn't figure out why it seemed as if they weren't responding the same way. A. What did you call it? Healthy? Lean or.
[12:09]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, healthy weight.
[12:10]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah, healthy weight.
[12:11]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Individual was. Yeah, that's right.
[12:12]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And throughout the years, I started thinking a lot about intermuscular adipose tissue, which I am very curious to hear your thoughts on. But really, when we think about anabolic resistance and why I opened with that is ultimately, in order for people to live well, healthy, strong, they obviously need good muscle, not just from mobility and strength, but really from that metabolic perspective. And if they can't maintain it or there is some challenge with training or nutrition, the opportunity to live well becomes somewhat diminished. And this is where your work comes in for intervention.
[12:50]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
That's it. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean. I mean, to your point, I mean, you know, I guess I didn't frame that very well in terms of anabolic resistance to muscle protein synthesis or to your point, rather like when you look at obese muscle, the quantities there.
[13:06]
Julia
Right.
[13:07]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But, you know, what my work is particularly showing, and others as well, is that it's really a quality problem.
[13:14]
Julia
Right.
[13:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So, you know, to keep a height, it's really important to live well or, you know, aging strong is always. Also another thing we're concerned with as well is that to keep high quality muscle mass, we need to ensure it's. It's turning over.
[13:29]
Julia
Right.
[13:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So with obese muscle, the quantity is there, but the quality is poor.
[13:35]
Julia
Right.
[13:35]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And it's likely due to multiple factors mechanistically as well as that enhancement of all that intramuscular adipose cells, as you alluded to. And yeah, so we need to improve the quality and what interventions work.
[13:52]
Julia
Right.
[13:53]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
We tried to acutely kickstart the muscle. It didn't work, but doesn't mean training well.
[13:58]
Julia
Right.
[13:58]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Because, you know, with everything. Consistency.
[14:02]
Julia
Right.
[14:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Consistency is key. Right. So I can do, you know, during my dissertation with Stu Phillips, we did all that load manipulation.
[14:09]
Julia
Right.
[14:09]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
High load versus low load, all that good stuff. Volume issues as well. But as we always say, you know, really the most important variable is consistency.
[14:21]
Julia
Right.
[14:21]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Find something you enjoy that you enjoy going to the gym and, and do it.
[14:27]
Julia
Right.
[14:27]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And that's the most important. I think with a beast muscle, I think the consistency might be, might be the key.
[14:33]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Even more so that, I mean, that's fascinating. And obesity, what, 74% are metabolically unhealthy. I mean, that's a lot of people. And when I think about your work, also your upcoming work, I'm curious as to. Again, we probably don't know which comes first. Is if someone has subcutaneous fat, is that the problem? Or is it really the level of lipids within and the placement and location of lipids within the skeletal muscle? And before you answer, I have to ask you this because I would love kind of in your. To frame it up in totality what you're thinking. But if an individual is obese, and let's say we define that as body fat percentage over, I don't know, 30%.
[15:21]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, BMI. But it is better to use percent body fat. Yeah.
[15:25]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Or BMI.
[15:27]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
How.
[15:30]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Long does it take for them to be able to recover that tissue, if ever? Right. So, for example, if someone becomes obese or is obese, then they lose weight. At what point do we see, is there an intramuscular adipose percentage? At what point do they then revert, if at all or ever. So if the listener is at home thinking, wow, I've been obese my whole life, I've never thought about that. Or they're a kid, maybe kids don't Listen to this. But parents do. If that is someone who's newly put on weight, fat tissue, where do we think in terms of the spectrum of what is possible for treatment?
[16:06]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I mean, that's a good point. I mean, so this is probably within the last six years. This has been something we've been thinking about in terms of when we're recruiting participants. It is something I don't have a great answer for. But how long have they been obese?
[16:23]
Julia
Right.
[16:23]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Is somebody who's just recently become obese, Right. Different than somebody who's been obese for a prolonged period of time?
[16:30]
Julia
Right.
[16:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Even adolescent obesity, you know something, this is tiptoeing outside my area of expertise. Just, you know, through interactions with colleagues and, you know, you know, it all comes back, you know, that whole concept of epigenetic regulation. So your DNA is probably getting tagged, right. So it's remembering. So let's say you're as a child, right? You've, you put on excess, excess adipose tissue. Now you're putting different tags on your DNA such that it, it remembers that.
[17:03]
Julia
Right?
[17:03]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So once you lose that excess adiposity, you still remember it.
[17:08]
Julia
Right?
[17:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
That's a lot of the pre clinical work. So the rodent work suggests that concept of epigenetic memory, or you know, you're.
[17:18]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Gonna say muscle memory.
[17:19]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, that's like, that's also a phrase I've heard, muscle memory as well. So I mean, they use it from a training standpoint too. So a lot of my colleagues tiptoe around that area, you know, in terms of stuff we've done, we try to think about it. I haven't, you know, in terms of. A lot of our work is more, you know, we just make sure this is just something we've done. Trivial. I don't have any evidence to say. At least, you know, when we're recruiting obese participants, at least for, you know, they've been obese for about a year prior. But that's just a trivial number or a trivial duration. I think it's, it's interesting. I mean, it's something you got to think about experimentally. We think about it rather. There's this existence of, you know, that epigen or that muscle memory. In terms of remembering, hey, you know what, I've been, you know, my muscle's been surrounded with all this excess fat, you know, when I was young and now, you know, I got old, found the gym, found better nutrition, I lost it, maybe. But there's no denying that at whatever age nutrition and exercise works. I'm sorry.
[18:24]
Julia
Right.
[18:25]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And I. Yes.
[18:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And there's no, you know, I've. In this whole concept of responder versus non responder. You know, like we say there's no such thing as a non responder to nutrition. No such thing as a non responder to exercise. This is a variable responder. Agree with that assertion.
[18:40]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But is that like an obese.
[18:42]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I would say that there's just no such. I mean, I'm sorry, nobody's not responding to food. You know what I mean? I think it's so easy to use that phrasing. But I do believe there's variable response responders. And then as we use more sophisticated analysis to understand what are these factors underpinning these variable responses? Right. So some of our initial. Look, never, you know, this is me, I'm going to get off track.
[19:07]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Okay, well, let's keep you back.
[19:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Okay. Because I'm just saying, like we can get back, you know, to that variable responders.
[19:13]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But, but also muscle protein synthesis. So the muscle protein synthesis, this anabolic response, I don't know if people understand muscle protein synthesis is somewhat of a proxy. Would you, would you define it as a proxy for healthy muscle for and for the capacity for turnover for that?
[19:32]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No.
[19:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I mean, what response? Because it's not a no.
[19:35]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Okay. This is, yeah, this is important. You know, I've, I gave a presentation recently, you know, on this concept and sometimes scientifically I just, you know, when you live and breathe something, you just, you don't, you know, you just sort of a given. And so, you know, the first thing to understand is that muscle protein synthesis. So what we study in the laboratory, it's. We're studying directly.
[20:01]
Julia
Right.
[20:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So your, your comment, is it a proxy for something? So, so really what you're interested in when we're thinking about muscle remodeling.
[20:12]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Right, that's exactly right.
[20:13]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Turnover.
[20:14]
Julia
Okay.
[20:15]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
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[21:52]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So two parts of that equation is protein synthesis and protein breakdown. All right, now, when you're thinking about which variable to trace to try to predict muscle remodeling, an obese muscle, an aging muscle, protein synthesis is a good variable to understand muscle protein remodeling because it's, it's just moving the most.
[22:25]
Julia
Right?
[22:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So when we look at muscle protein remodeling, we really defined it by net protein balance, right? So when you're in a positive state of remodeling, you're in a positive state of net protein balance. And so when you're trying to manipulate that equation, you want obviously to either turn on synthesis or minimize breakdown, right. Or whatever combination you want to do. So generally in, you know, even though we don't think obese people are healthy per se, but, you know, obese. I was almost going to say healthy. Healthy obesity.
[22:56]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Do you believe there's such a thing?
[22:58]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Well, sometimes it's interesting because, you know, we'll study some of these participants who are, it depends on what you're looking at, I guess, because sometimes we'll see somebody who has, who is, who is obese clinically, but yet their glucose tolerances just, you know, just rock star, you know what I mean? Very normal glucose tolerance.
[23:16]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Do you look at intramuscular adipose tissue?
[23:19]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
We have imaging techniques to do it. I prefer, because I think you alluded to this earlier. It's, it's such a dynamic question.
[23:29]
Julia
Right.
[23:29]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So the location, the distribution, the size of that lipid droplet, how, how close to the mitochondrial is that lipid droplet? Is it tethered to that mitochondria?
[23:39]
Julia
Right, right.
[23:39]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
So it's very complex.
[23:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. So it's, you can get some of that stuff from advanced imaging, at least visually, but, you know, it's difficult. We like to get in there.
[23:49]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And actually, and here's the reason I asked, because we were talking about Anabolic resistance in obesity. And that's really defined by BMI or percentage. And over the years, clinically, I think that while we have these definitions based on large populations.
[24:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[24:08]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
If someone. Let's just say in this, and I don't mean to anger anybody who's listening, let's say a 25% body fat that is not healthy for that individual. And then you see that. So they're, you know, again, they. Whether it's. Yeah, I think that just simply stating it like that. And that's why I wonder if an individual with various levels of fat within that tissue, which is very dynamic, like you said, plays a role.
[24:40]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, I mean, this is where we think about these variable responders and this is where we need to do better analysis and stuff. We've been doing, playing around with collaborators using these soft clustering techniques. And what you can do is take a big data set and then look at different clusters. So I think you're, I guess, help frame this. And so when you're thinking about, you know, the responsiveness to food, sometimes we, we look at leucine, right. And this whole concept of how important leucine is and triggering protein synthesis, and. I don't think I finished that thought. So the reason we chase protein synthesis is because it seems to be the biggest driver in that protein balance.
[25:24]
Julia
Right.
[25:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But you know, with burn patients, Dallas patients, it's a little hard, harder to. To think about. That's when breakdown comes, comes into play. And sometimes in rodent models, breakdown is a bigger driver. But when we're thinking about human muscle tissue, protein synthesis seems to be the main driver on net protein balance and on this whole concept of anabolic resistance. So my point being is the fact that we can't trigger a big response on myofibrillar protein synthesis is a concern because that means there's pork. You know, like I said, obese muscle, there's a big bulk of it, but the quality of it's quite poor. And it's probably leading to a lot of, a lot of issues. And like you said, the, the amount of lipids and how they're interacting with those myofibrillar proteins and mitochondrial proteins are playing a role. But, you know, back to this. You know, your, your whole concept about trying to find, you know, this. And it is important this, you know, we, we like to, you know, not us per se, but everybody across the US this whole precision or personalized nutrition, personalized exercise.
[26:27]
Julia
Right.
[26:27]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I just eat at McDonald's.
[26:28]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, some people can. Some people Can't.
[26:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Just kidding.
[26:32]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, bad joke.
[26:33]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I'm sorry.
[26:34]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I wish. I know. Well, I don't know if I go to McDonald's. I think I've been hitting Culver's up a lot. That's from Wisconsin. We got one in town. Kids love that place. But anyway, what I was trying to allude to is that, you know, so interesting is, you know, I, when we're thinking about is somebody responding or not, you know, somebody turning on protein synthesis, is it, you know, what's driving these variable responses? Is it, is it 25 body fat, is it 30% body fat? Or is it the ratio of, you know, lean mass to, to fat mass? Or you know, or is it somebody with a little higher quality turnover? Are they going to be a little response responsive to somebody who has a lower quality turnover? And to help frame that even more, what I'm saying is some of our work is showing when we use this cluster analysis and again to think about leucine and when we eat food, you know, this whole concept of this loosing trigger or threshold usually.
[27:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Tom may have mentioned that one.
[27:34]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he, he likes that one. But you know what's interesting is what we see a lot of times it's with older adults, I haven't really checked it out with obesity is that, you know, the leucine threshold is probably more relevant for an older adult with less lean mass. Okay, so you can have an older adult with highly massive Lutheran threshold. Doesn't matter what's interesting we've even seen.
[27:56]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And why is that? Is it because they're.
[27:58]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I just think they're healthier.
[27:58]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
They're healthier.
[27:59]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But what's interesting, what I was getting after a younger adult with more lean mass, the leucine threshold seems to be perhaps relevant, which is exact opposite of what I would have thought.
[28:10]
Julia
Right.
[28:10]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And again, these are just some initial. When you just play around with some of the soft clustering analysis.
[28:15]
Julia
Right?
[28:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So when we talk about anabolic resistance or we talk about losing threshold, it's sort of like it depends, right? There's characteristics of certain people and this is where we need to define what, what is the characteristics that are allowing anabolic resistance and obese muscle to be really strong or what are the characteristics that are making it be less relevant. The same with the leucine threshold are the characteristics where that leucine is really important.
[28:46]
Julia
Right.
[28:47]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
The older adults make sense, right? That usually when you have less lean mass, you probably have more, you know, greater fat mass and you're just less sensitive. But the other, you know, that that concept of a young person with more lean mass seems to be a little more responsive or might be better. That's. That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy to me. And, you know, that's. That's me just, you know, just riffing a little bit and just seeing some initial, you know, analyses of some of the stuff we're looking at. And that's. That's where we need to be. But to get there, we got to generalize a little bit, which is a lot of my initial studies where we're seeing anabolic resistance is, hey, when we just bring in, you know, 12 to 14 obese adults, which isn't a lot, but using our sophisticated methods, we see that anabolic resistance in particular in the myofibrillar fraction. The next step is, is that anabolic resistance in all obese people or what is the characteristics of that obese muscle that's allowing that to be more or less prevalent?
[29:44]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I mean, it's fascinating. If you could answer some of those questions, that would be. That would be really groundbreaking.
[29:48]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, let's go to McDonald's, and we'll come back. I'll be firing on.
[29:53]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
We don't really eat at McDonald's. But it is really fascinating because the outcome, you know, in anabolic resistance is, you know, if you were to say, okay, like, what's the linchpin of how we can move these people forward? Yeah, they have to eat. 50% of Americans are not exercising. And I'm curious. So you. When you were talking about this study that you did, you gave them 36 grams of protein and they didn't mount a response.
[30:20]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. And that was just because, you know, we didn't have the money to do a dose response in obese muscle.
[30:25]
Julia
And. Right.
[30:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And, you know, if you look at older adults, sometimes they need a little more. And a lot of the models we look at. Correct.
[30:30]
Julia
Right.
[30:31]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
You see that an older adult might need a little more food protein to initiate a big rise in myofibrillar protein synthesis relative to the younger counterparts. So, you know, I never did a dose response in a beast muscle. But you know what's interesting when we think about this concept and, you know, to go back to Professor Bettina Mittendorfer's work, and, you know, she's. She's definitely a thinker. And, you know, this is where I sometimes, you know, I would have a tendency to be like, oh, it's, you know, or some people do when she's talking about the whole concept of protein over Consumption.
[31:07]
Julia
Right.
[31:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Protein over consumption. And a lot of, some of her studies have shown that it's actually have a negative impact on insulin resistance or insulin sensitivity. And then. And so I was like, ah, that's, that's interesting. I think maybe exercise and sort of counteract probably some of those negative consequences of protein over consumption. I mean, overeating on any macronutrient and not. Not moving.
[31:33]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah.
[31:33]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Not moving is not positive. But.
[31:37]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And I'd want to define what is protein over. I mean, that's.
[31:40]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It's just eating above the rda, right. Is what is somewhat. Arguably. Yeah, that's, that's a minimum. And you know, and you know, in Western society, you know, when we're bringing in participants off, off out of, you know, the Midwest area, that's where I'm from, Illinois, you know, most of the participants are coming in about 1.1, 1.2 grams per kg per day. In fact, you know, when you try to. If I bring a participant and try to hold them at the protein rda, it's not happening. Participants are going to find great news. Protein. Yeah, you know, we're, we're protein hungry or just we have the accessibility of it. It's no problem. Yet, you know, where the protein RDA is really important is in developing nations where, you know, you can help, you know, prevent some of those protein deficiencies.
[32:26]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
What do you think, some of the mechanisms, if we were to think about, you know, I am really interested in this anabolic resistance because very few people have studied it the way that you guys are studying it and have. What are some of the mechanisms of anabolic resistance and are they different in obesity versus aging? Can we.
[32:52]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, yeah, I guess that's. Yeah, I got sidetracked a little bit. Yeah. So, you know, anabolic resistance probably comes in various shapes and forms, for one.
[33:02]
Julia
Right.
[33:03]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So, you know, you and I are probably inducing some level of anabolic resistance when we, you know, through sedentary behavior, when we sit here for a couple hours.
[33:12]
Julia
Right.
[33:13]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But the beauty is we're going to get up and move around.
[33:14]
Julia
Right.
[33:15]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
That's the whole concept of exercise, snacks, you know, getting up and every 30 minutes to an hour, making sure we're doing some movement to sort of ensure that we're not inducing some transient anabolic resistance. All right, so that's, you know, getting rid of that. But when we, when we think about an older adult or older muscle versus obese muscle, and that was sort of my point. So we fed that big bolus 36 grams.
[33:39]
Julia
Why?
[33:39]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Because in past We've shown that that's sort of been able to successfully overcome anabolic resistance with aging.
[33:48]
Julia
Right.
[33:49]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so when we saw it with 36 grams in a. In our original study that was conducted by Joe Beals, when He's doing my PhD with him, actually, he's at Wash U now too. He's been there for a while with Sam Klein. But the fact we still showed it, I was like, wow, that's crazy. They're still resistant to that 36 grams of food protein. But when you sit back and think a little more about it, what do we know about an older adult? You know, an older adult, what do they have? They have muscle anabolic resistance, but they also have digestive anabolic resistance.
[34:21]
Julia
Right.
[34:22]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So it makes sense when you can sort of One way to overcome that digestive anabolic resistance is maybe, or have they shown. Eat more food protein.
[34:32]
Julia
Right.
[34:33]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Overcome that digestive anabolic resistance to get enough substrate to the muscle to help robustly stimulate myofibrillar protein synthesis.
[34:44]
Julia
Right.
[34:45]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
What we know about an obese muscle or obese person, they don't have a problem. They don't have a digestive anabolic resistance.
[34:54]
Julia
Right.
[34:54]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So feeding more and more food protein to obese adult makes zero sense, because there's no issue there. The issues intrinsic to the muscle.
[35:05]
Julia
Right.
[35:06]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
We got to fix. Yeah, we got to fix the muscle.
[35:09]
Julia
Right.
[35:09]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And what are some of the problems? Well, you know, the first factor is probably poor capillary supply.
[35:15]
Julia
Right.
[35:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
They're. They're struggling to get the nutrients there.
[35:18]
Julia
Right.
[35:19]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
The second one is probably, you know, that fact. We can't get mtor. It's probably caught up in the. In the sarcoplasm. It can't get up to that hub very well. So not only can it get up to that hub, but this, the plasma membrane, but they don't have the capillaries there to support it.
[35:37]
Julia
Right.
[35:38]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
They have all that, you know, that intramuscular fat interfering.
[35:44]
Julia
Right.
[35:44]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
With the signals.
[35:46]
Julia
Right.
[35:46]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And collectively, all those factors, you know, which comes first, I think you were sort of alluding to earlier. I don't know, is it the fat that's initiating all these problems? Maybe. Probably, right? It's probably. It's certainly something to do with that. Intramuscular fat is probably the starting the problem. And then it's probably preventing MTOR from getting there. It's collective with the prolonged sedentary behavior coupled to the low physical activities impacting the capillaries. That's my point with consistency, Right.
[36:13]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That comes back to my talking about consistency.
[36:15]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[36:16]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
With the muscle protein synthesis.
[36:19]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[36:20]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
You guys are measuring that when you say it didn't mount a response?
[36:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[36:25]
Julia
What.
[36:25]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
What is it that you're just very simply, sure, what does that mean?
[36:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So we use. So when we're looking at Meyer for blood protein synthesis or what, it doesn't matter what fraction we're studying. We use stable isotope methods. So, you know, one way to think about that is, everybody, I'm sure your listeners are familiar with a amino acid, right? Yeah. So amino acids is a building block of muscle protein.
[36:51]
Julia
Right.
[36:52]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So what we do is we buy a special amino acid that's been tagged or made heavy. Okay. And then we need to introduce that to the participants so we can trace where it's. It's going right through the body. So in those particular studies, we just inserted a catheter in somebody's arm vein, and then we infused that stable isotope tracer. And then, you know, our experiments are long because your, your muscle protein isn't building super fast.
[37:20]
Julia
Right.
[37:20]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So, you know, we usually our participants in the laboratory for, depending on what our measurements are, but anywhere from, you know, eight to 10 hours in a day.
[37:31]
Julia
Right.
[37:31]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so they're just hanging out with us. I'm doing, you know, I'm. They love me because I'm such a good comedian. Yeah. I'm a master of dad jokes. But the, they're like, you want me to put a movie on? No, you just want to hear me. I'm your man. But then over time, so we're introducing that tracer that's been made heavy. So it's, it's being incorporated into the muscle. We're taking muscle biopsies, and then we're just studying how much of that has been incorporated, how much of the tracer we provided has been incorporated into, you know, in our discussion, the Meyer fribiller protein fraction. And then we need to know the availability and then the time. We can do a calculation on our spreadsheets that gives us a calculation of Meyer fabrillar protein synthesis. And as I alluded to, that's generally a good indicator of the net protein balance equation and then the subsequent remodeling response we're getting.
[38:23]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And I like that you're pointing out that it's remodeling. It's not necessarily growth.
[38:27]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Well, yeah, sorry, Yeah, I got really distracted. So there's two types of remodeling, right.
[38:31]
Julia
We.
[38:31]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I have to write about this all the time. You know, muscle protein synthesis comes in various shapes and sizes.
[38:35]
Julia
Right.
[38:35]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It can be hypertrophic Remodeling or it can be non hypertrophic. Remodeling, our tools is not a hypertrophic marker. That's where the confusion arises all the time. I sort of just, yeah, it's not a growth marker, it's a remodeling marker.
[38:49]
Julia
Right.
[38:49]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Maybe for you it's, you know, it's a better predictor of growth that sort of goes back to that variable responder. But for me, clearly it's not.
[39:01]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But it's. But I think it's an important point. It's an important point because if someone were to look at the literature out there, the majority, and let's say they're not an expert and they're going because they want to learn more about it and they like to spend their free time going on PubMed and it says muscle protein synthesis. And I think in the social media landscape that's people equate that with growth and hypertrophy. And really the majority of muscle protein synthesis, 250 to 300 plus grams is really with that turnover.
[39:34]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, it's a remodeling marker.
[39:35]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
It's a remodeling marker.
[39:36]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[39:37]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Maybe 5 grams. Potentially a day, like, I don't know, a day maximum.
[39:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Well, the point is, when we eat food, what do we do? We turn on remodeling. Just sitting around eating food without exercise. You're not going to expand your myofibrillar protein pool, but you are remodeling because it's very important. We got to get rid of those old damaged proteins and replace them with new ones to keep a healthy proteome.
[40:01]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And that's the key. It's the health and the ability to do that as an individual, ages, potentially or if they're obese. Which brings me to this idea of resistance training. In some of your studies, resistance training didn't necessarily boost muscle protein synthesis with obesity the same way that it does in lean individuals.
[40:23]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, and that's sort of what I said. The problem was that it was getting caught up in that sarcoplismic fraction instead of getting built into the myofibrillar fraction. So I thought, hey, we can just exercise an obese muscle and boom, done.
[40:36]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I mean, it would make sense.
[40:39]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Enjoy lake life and do some fishing. Yeah, I got it. Done. Solve the problem. Thanks. The whole world can say or thank.
[40:45]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
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[42:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But no. So the problem was. Yeah, it was an acute study. It got caught up in the sarcoplysmic fraction. We couldn't get it built into the myofibrillar fractions for some odd reason. It's probably related to those. It's an intrinsic problem. We got to fix some of those.
[42:21]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
What are we gonna do about it?
[42:22]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Consistency with exercise.
[42:24]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Easy, do you think? Over time. But that's fascinating. So I guess what you're saying is that in one hand, these are very discreet moments in time, and that potentially over time, does that tissue, that response, become more attuned to training?
[42:42]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
What it does is it increases. I mean, for one thing, this is my point. We can. Yeah, this is. Now we're getting serious here, Gabrielle. Now's time to talk.
[42:50]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Good. I'm ready for it.
[42:54]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So this is where what I think is we can make the muscle more. The phrasing sometimes I use is efficient.
[43:00]
Julia
Right.
[43:00]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So protein efficiency. We can enhance the protein efficiency of our skeletal muscle tissue. And I think we can do the same by using resistance exercise in particular in an obese muscle. I think consistency with the resistance exercise will help correct some of these problems. Not saying we don't use endurance exercise to help, obviously, but I think resistance exercise is paramount.
[43:21]
Julia
Right.
[43:21]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And one reason when we think endurance exercise, it's a completely different animal than resistance exercise in terms of how it's impacting efficiency.
[43:33]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
What is. What is protein efficiency?
[43:35]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
That's a good question. No.
[43:37]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
All right, guess the podcast is over now.
[43:39]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
You know how do you define it?
[43:40]
Julia
Right?
[43:42]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I, I, that's another phrase I always use a number of times. What are you talking about? I'm like, what do you mean? Protein efficiency just makes sense definitionally. I mean, I guess I put a definition on this in some of my grants, but essentially when I'm thinking about protein efficiency, when we consume the same absolute amount. So if we eat 20 grams of food protein, right? If you want, if you're efficient with your food protein, what's going to happen is you're going to get a large incorporation to the myof ruler fraction with minimal oxidative waste.
[44:16]
Julia
Right?
[44:18]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And so that's a good definition.
[44:20]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[44:20]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Wrote that here.
[44:21]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Oh yeah. Did I? Yeah, maybe. Okay. Yeah, probably. And so what I think we can do with resistance exercise is actually increase your, your protein efficiency because why? Resistance exercise is fundamentally anabolic, Right. It's kind of different than what we see with endurance exercise. So what I mean by that, what happens during the, so when we do a bout of resistance exercise, right. One thing that happens is, or actually it's very unique. And actually Professor Wayne Campbell asked me a good question once and it's a very good question because when we look at resistance exercise, you actually enhance your amino acid sensitivity, right? So for example, if I'm just sitting here and I consume or slug down a protein shake, for example, that protein shake should have about 10 grams of essential amino acids in it, right. To robustly stimulate myofibrillar protein synthesis. The essentials, you need them all. But the essentials are really, really good at turning on or enhancing myofibrillar protein synthesis. After exercise, we need less, right?
[45:26]
Julia
Why?
[45:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Because your muscles now turn into a bigger protein sink, right? So you only need about 8 grams of essential amino acids, right. So a lot of people, what's interesting, a lot of people post exercise, they like to try to eat more and more food protein. But it's like, well, you're actually enhanced acutely. You enhanced it, right? So you need less in the post exercise state than you need in the resting state. And then based on that notion, I remember Professor Wayne Campbell asked me, so are you telling me that resistance exercise is the only. I think it was actually in a group that is a part of. But is resistance exercise the only, which was interesting is the only thing we can do to actually lower, you know, the protein rda, which was, which literally I'm kind of saying that, but no, no, I'm not saying that, you know, right. The protein RDA is a prevented deficiency. I'm just Saying we don't need as much during the post, the post exercise state.
[46:22]
Julia
Right.
[46:22]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Now let's say look at a trained muscle, what do we get better at doing? Right, Train muscle, we get better nitrogen turnover. So we're better at using the amino acids are being broke down and putting them back in to the muscle.
[46:35]
Julia
Right.
[46:36]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And then what happens when you over consume protein? Well, the thing that happens is that your gut steals more.
[46:42]
Julia
Right.
[46:43]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So you get more splanknic extraction because it's so used to having that substrate. It makes sense.
[46:47]
Julia
Right.
[46:47]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And then what do you do? You, you expand the nitrogen pool, the urea pool and then you upregulate proteolytic enzymes.
[46:56]
Julia
Right.
[46:56]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So you know, and, and Professor Dan Moore up in Toronto has beautiful work showing that if you're chronically eating high protein, what happens? You actually elevate your protein requirements because you've just made your muscle less efficient.
[47:10]
Julia
Right.
[47:11]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so exactly. Coming back, we're trying to tie this back to obesity. Bettina, you know, has the, you know, some very nice data showing protein overconsumption. Eating too much food, protein bite might be having a negative impact on obese muscle. Okay. Exercise, probably correcting it.
[47:30]
Julia
Right.
[47:31]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Arguably, maybe we can counteract that. But you know, obese people, what do they need to be? I know protein calories is not a problem, but just energy management in particular consistently use resistance exercise. Correct some of these mechanisms. We have increased protein efficiency. I think, I think, I think that's an easy start.
[47:51]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I mean it sounds like it should be easy and well, this is the.
[47:57]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Biobehaviorist or practitioners now you need to find out to make exercise fun. It is fun because I don't have the time to stand there and just motivate.
[48:05]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
You know, you said something dad jokes.
[48:07]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
All day long when people are exercising.
[48:08]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
We would enjoy that. Very fascinating. And it was about this idea of using. You didn't say microbial protease, but I know that you worked on a study. What was the name of the. Was it Amplify Optizone? Do you remember that study? I think that.
[48:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Oh, the proteolytic enzymes.
[48:27]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah. You had mentioned this idea that efficiency is important and efficiency is, it seems somewhat up to us as to how our behaviors shape whether we are not wasting what we are consuming. I will piggyback and say we have to eat something. Whether we're eating carbs, proteins or fats. One could choose protein. Again, maybe to support beyond muscle protein synthesis. There are probably many utilizations or uses for those amino acids like mucin and you know, from threonine or dopamine or any of those other things.
[49:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. You're talking about. I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm not eating protein in excess to help promote.
[49:15]
Julia
Other.
[49:18]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Remodeling or beyond the minimum.
[49:20]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I don't think, I think, like I said, I mean, most people, my concern with a weightlifter, for some reason they just, they're protein hungry. They're just chasing protein everywhere and which.
[49:31]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
The protein police.
[49:32]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, yeah, I'm not. Well, yeah, I always say I'm not the protein police, but usually, you know, if you like to eat protein, go for it. But it's endurance athletes is where I usually have to be a little more thoughtful because they're, it's completely different animal versus versus weightlifting. But, you know, so whatever. If a weightlifter wants to eat a lot of food, protein, go for it. I'm not going to tell them not to, but they're. My point is weightlifting, you can enhance protein efficiency.
[49:54]
Julia
Okay.
[49:55]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Which is incredible for someone who doesn't want to ingest a lot of calories or doesn't want to eat a lot of food.
[50:00]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No. And you know, back to your point, I think we presented some of this stuff at conferences too, so. Using proteases or.
[50:09]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I have the paper here. I read it.
[50:11]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, we haven't. We followed up some of that work that I think is more interesting. So we, we did that same thing in older adults and instead we fed a mixed meal. Okay. And then, you know, one of the objectives with that study is obviously with older adults, I just sort of said they have digestive anabolic resistance.
[50:28]
Julia
Right.
[50:29]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
One way they're trying to overcome that is this. Here grandma and grandpa will eat a bunch of food, eat more. Which doesn't make sense.
[50:36]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I didn't pause you on the digestive anabolic resistance. Can we just take a second there?
[50:40]
Julia
Sure.
[50:42]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
When I think about digestive anabolic resistance, if we define anabolic resistance as this decrease, can we say inefficiency for a muscle to respond the way it should.
[50:53]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
You mean for muscle anabolic resistance?
[50:55]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yes.
[50:56]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. I mean, you're just not, you're not eliciting a robust myofibrillar protein synthetic response in response to normal anabolic stimuli.
[51:04]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
What is digestive?
[51:06]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, it's just where. Yeah, I mean, it's when. Yeah, the mechanism under underpinning it are, are interesting. A lot of these are being done and not in vivo models, ex vitro models. But for example, Luke Van Loon has the cool tools and I, I have the poor man Approaches. He uses the dairy milk. I use intrinsically labeled eggs instead of intrinsically labeled milk proteins. But, you know, Luke studies are Lupin Loon over in the Netherlands. His studies are cool because what he shows is that an older adult has, when you eat, in this case, you know, a lot of his dairy manipulations, that they have a reduced digestion, protein digestion absorption kinetics.
[51:54]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I mean, we see that in practice. Yeah, obviously don't do protein.
[51:58]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, no.
[51:59]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But we see with.
[52:00]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So he has a. I mean, the best tools. I love that stuff that he does. That's why I went over there and spent some time to learn the techniques and. Super expensive. But I admire Luke a lot. Like I said, he's one of my science heroes. But he, he has. He shows. He shows that. And so back to your question, I think is, you know, older adults have satiety issues. So one of the things we were.
[52:23]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Meaning they are hungry less.
[52:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So like I said, just trying to get them to eat more and more food. Why it might help, you know, get some more of that substrate into circulation to help give a big push on muscle protein synthesis. It might not be practice that. That reasonable. So we were charged with trying to enhanced postprandial nutrient concentrations by using enzyme blends. So not only proteases, but trying to get more glucose, fat, everything in the circulation. So can we use an enzyme blend to try to help facilitate nutrient release? And we were somewhat successful, I think.
[53:12]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Would you take a microbial protease?
[53:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Would I personally, if you were older.
[53:18]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
More mature, maybe, I don't know, 65 and up.
[53:21]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I'm. Maybe. I mean, I'm not against it. I just. I'm pretty lazy when it comes. But, you know, I'm not chasing. I'm not chasing much of anything. I'm literally sitting around. No, I'm lazy in terms of my nutrition. Like I said, I don't. I like Luke's phrasing. I don't take my work home with me, but would I recommend it to my grandparents? Yeah, sure, yeah. Would I. Would I do it? Yeah. I don't know. I don't think much about when you have kids and everything. It's life's, you know, trust me, I'm getting enough food protein.
[53:56]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
What did you guys find? Did it actually. So it did.
[54:00]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It's not a published study. It's only been in conference form, abstracts and whatnot.
[54:06]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Can you talk about some of it or.
[54:07]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, so, I mean, it's been at conferences. I can't remember which one here I'LL.
[54:12]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Let me shoot it over to you.
[54:13]
Julia
Ready? Yeah.
[54:14]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Acute microbial protease supplementation increases net postprandial plasma amino acid concentrations after pea protein ingestion.
[54:24]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, that was the pea protein study which, which has been published.
[54:26]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yep.
[54:27]
Julia
Right.
[54:28]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
This was another study that was with using an actual. What I was more interested in was a mixed meal. And this is the study I was.
[54:34]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Telling you are very interested in food matrix. And there's a. Again, when we look at the landscape of protein, it's. We're not giving tagged. I mean people aren't eating tagged amino acids or.
[54:47]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, well, you don't need to. It's just a tool that we have to. To understand how metabolically how they're responding to nutrition and exercise. Now that study was done in younger. Younger folks. The one you're referencing with the P. Protein. The study I was really keen on was the one that's only been published in abstract form. So in that study they. Our only objective was trying to enhance the postprandial release of dietary amino acids to pea protein, which is a plant based protein.
[55:17]
Julia
Right.
[55:17]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Because yeah, it's crazy when you. A lot of these vegan protein sources or even Luke has some of these studies, you just don't see a very big push on the postprandial amino acid profiles.
[55:27]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That is. Could you say that again?
[55:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, well with isolated pea protein it's. No, I mean it's that eating that people are. Yeah, that's not a problem there. But I'm saying when you're eating of an actual meal.
[55:39]
Julia
Right.
[55:40]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So a vegan meal that's been designed so you know, so plant based foods. Not saying a supplement's not a food, but yeah, that's an isolated pea protein. Those are effective.
[55:51]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But what's interesting, even with food combinations, because it actually came out of Luke's lab, he looked I think at a mixed meal, 40 grams of plant based protein food. Like he did a vegan meal and then he did a beef meal. I think it wasn't that long ago. And he. One of the things he said that there was just.
[56:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
That was my point in that response. You didn't see much action.
[56:11]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
You didn't see any.
[56:12]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But then he followed it up.
[56:13]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Muscle protein syndrome.
[56:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Do you remember the follow up study?
[56:16]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I don't remember the follow up.
[56:17]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, the follow up study they used. This was in response to. This was an older adult. They used vegan versus animal based meals using a different tool. So heavy water. Deuterium.
[56:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yes. How much do the. But the methods also can certainly Seem to, I don't want to say again, this is your area of expertise. It seems as if that you have to choose a method that is well tested and can be replicated and the right to get that.
[56:49]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I mean, that's true with any. I mean, what's your. You design the, the research question is going to dictate your method.
[56:56]
Julia
Right.
[56:56]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
You don't, you know, you don't take one method. And because, you know, the beauty is I trained with the best. And so, you know, that is for sure. I can, I can use whatever method makes sense for the research question. So those acute studies that you just described to me, that was substrate Pacific work. Okay, so that was using the. What I was describing earlier intravenously. So you buy. And I think in that particular study is likely labeled phenylalanine.
[57:22]
Julia
Right.
[57:23]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
In particular, I bet it was 13C6 phenylalanine. So that benzene ring on the phenylalanine molecule is heavily labeled.
[57:29]
Julia
Right.
[57:29]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So that's a nice heavy tracer. We like stable, Stable isotope. People like myself and Don and Luke and all these guys, we like a heavy tracer. It just experimentally, it's nice. It's expensive, but it's nice.
[57:40]
Julia
All right.
[57:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Okay. So when you're doing those single meal responses, the study you just described to me, that's. He used, he used that.
[57:49]
Julia
Right.
[57:50]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so in that setting, in response to a single meal, everything you just said is true. All right, now the next question Luke had, and I, you know, I had the same question. Younger adults, what happens when you remove or take a participant, have them eat their normal dietary pattern?
[58:10]
Julia
Right.
[58:11]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So something you're interested in? I think in his case, one week. In my case, it was a week for sure. Maybe a little longer. So in Luke's study, he did that same study, but instead of looking at a one meal, he looked at multiple meals.
[58:22]
Julia
Right.
[58:23]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So when they consumed, I think the protein was at 1.2 grams per kilogram per day.
[58:29]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
So that's high.
[58:29]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, it's high. Yeah. And right. You got to be clever. Well, you got to have dietitians, you know, designing those vegan meals.
[58:35]
Julia
Right.
[58:35]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Do you know the carb load in that? Was it whole foods?
[58:38]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I mean, I got a good. It was whole foods, but I, you know, I don't, I, I can't remember the details. But my point is, in that study, they used deuterium.
[58:47]
Julia
All right?
[58:47]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So literally, what the participants are doing, it's a different tool because let's say, you know, you can't have A participant hang out in your laboratory for a week. I mean, you could, but that would be crazy.
[58:57]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And just metabolic.
[58:59]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, yeah. And the mistrict does. But anyway, just, it's a lot of stress on a participant. Just infuse them for a week. It's, it's not the right tool, but heavy water, guess what you can do? Participant can come in, you can give them the heavy water, have them take some home with them, and then they can go about their day, you can feed them the food and then, you know, they can come back and, you know, you can take a biopsy at the beginning of the week and take one at the end of the week.
[59:23]
Julia
Right.
[59:23]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And then you can look at protein synthesis in a more free living situation. The problem with the free living situation is that humans are going to be humans.
[59:32]
Julia
Right.
[59:33]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It's going to be noisy.
[59:34]
Julia
Right.
[59:34]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
In terms of. So the only thing we can do when we're using heavy water and having the participants leave our laboratory is you can't control for everything, but we can try to monitor it.
[59:44]
Julia
Right?
[59:44]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So you look at accelerometers, you try to do as many dietary recalls as you can, these kind of things, constant reminders with phones. But what heavy water does is participant drinks, literally water that's been made heavy.
[59:56]
Julia
Right?
[59:57]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
The hydrogens are heavy, they drink it. And guess what? It's clever because now instead of infusing the tracer, the human, the participant is making the tracer for you. So those hydrogens are exchanging with amino acids.
[60:10]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
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[61:43]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Making them heavy. In particular, they like to use alanine because it's real good at accepting hydrogens.
[61:48]
Julia
And.
[61:48]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And now the participant can go about their day and then we can take those biopsies and look at one week protein synthesis instead of the single meal response.
[61:57]
Julia
Right.
[61:57]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
They sound. And how old were these participants?
[62:00]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
These were older adults.
[62:01]
Julia
Older adults, yes.
[62:02]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And do you define that as.
[62:04]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I didn't find it as anything. He defined it as. I think they were 70 years old.
[62:11]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
How did you find?
[62:12]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Like I said, no difference between. And so in an older adult eating a vegan versus versus a animal based dietary pattern. So not just one meal, but multiple meals. He showed no difference.
[62:24]
Julia
Right.
[62:24]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And then I have the same data in young adults.
[62:27]
Julia
Right.
[62:28]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Undergoing resistance exercise. So I think when we're looking at vegan meals per se, there's multiple problems here. You got to look at it when you. In the context of a dietary pattern. But you know, in the study of my young adults and his studying older adults, those were designed by dietitians.
[62:49]
Julia
Right.
[62:50]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And we were. And so each meal they were eating were. The vegan meals were designed to be protein dense.
[62:57]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
What about the micronutrients? Because there's a lot of micronutrient deficiencies and.
[63:00]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[63:01]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
About women and.
[63:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. No, everything you're saying is fair.
[63:04]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
How do we account for that if people choose. And again, it's a luxury to be able to not have.
[63:09]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[63:09]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I mean I'm animal based foods.
[63:12]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. No, I mean even our dietary patterns. Right. They're clever. Because if you look at the healthy eating patterns within our USD, the dietary guidelines recognize that they don't have a vegan dietary pattern. What do they have? They have a vegetarian healthy eating pattern.
[63:26]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah.
[63:27]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And what do they do? Eat an egg and eat some dairy.
[63:30]
Julia
Right.
[63:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So they make sure that's one way to correct.
[63:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah.
[63:33]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
For it. I, I don't have. I mean, I'm not a vegan. Um, you know, like I said, I'm not the protein police if somebody wants to eat vegan. You know, I think yeah, there are more issues in older adults, but just in the context of muscle remodeling. Like I said, his acute study conflicted with his chronic study. All right, so there was some differential responses there.
[63:58]
Julia
Right.
[63:59]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It could be a methods problem. I have 100% faith in the single meals. I love Using the substrate pacific stuff versus the deuterium oxide work the pros and cons and like I said, but I, if I had to when I designed my experiments, I try to use the substrate Pacific stuff. Not to say that we don't use a D2O method. It's just different, it's different questions.
[64:25]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
What are you really excited about doing? I mean I have a, a paper here or. This is a. It's not a paper, it's. It's a proposal.
[64:36]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. Oh yeah, that. Oh, something I sent over.
[64:39]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah, yeah, you sent it over.
[64:40]
Julia
Yeah.
[64:40]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
So we got, we got. And it's fascinating and I'm just curious, I don't want to say anything about it. I'm, I would love to hear from you. Is there something that you are really excited about?
[64:53]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
You know I get excited about. I love science. Like I'm. If you look at my career you probably notice like I'm all over the place in terms, you know, I'll study Dallas's patients, I'll study. We just got a nice grant through the ADA to study some protein requirements for type 2 diabetics. This obesity related stuff I'm really interested in, I'm interested in the food matrix stuff. You know, I would say if we're not having fun, what's the point, right? I get excited when I see my students get excited. I love it all. I mean you tell me. I just like the pursuit of a research question and I do have a tendency to get bored easily. So I like my, you know, each student has a little different concept and each one of them there's something exciting about them all. Like I said, the biggest enjoyment I have is seeing the excitement of, of them.
[65:45]
Julia
Right.
[65:45]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So the fact whenever whatever research study we're studying just to see the students how pumped out, pumped up they are about it. I like, I mean I'm a big science nerd. I like methodological questions where I'm doing some stuff with Dan Moore. The more methodological, just trying to understand the tool. That kind of stuff excites me. But you know, the clinical work is interesting. The performance nutrition work is, is, is interesting. I'm trying to understand some of this endurance exercise, protein requirements stuff. I don't think we got a good handle on, on those aspects. Certainly the obesity related questions you were asking are really important. How can we overcome this obesity anabolic. I think consistency with resistance exercise is going to be key.
[66:29]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Do you think they need a different diet? So for example, you're going to be studying type 2 diabetes, diabetics Diabetics with protein. You think the diet or the training recommendations need to be different?
[66:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I don't know. I mean, again, I mean, we don't have it. I don't have enough data. This is where, like I said, we got to do the studies and then we got to use more sophisticated analysis to understand it.
[66:53]
Julia
Right.
[66:53]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Because there's going to be inherently variable responders. That's just, you know, we're not easy people to understand humans. I mean, you throw over overlay a metabolic disease, it's even more complicated. Yeah. And so this is where we got to do these studies. I always say, you know, I'm not the only advocate, you know, we need more. You know, and I'm fortunate enough that we do work together and instead of some scientists, you know what they. We're all trying to do the same thing. But I. I hate when we're all trying. We need to have more interdisciplinary. Not only interdisciplinary, but just across the field collaborations so we can combine our data sets. And I think, you know, most of us are open to it, some are not. But trying to understand that it depends.
[67:40]
Julia
Right.
[67:40]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Like what you're asking me. I think it depends. I don't know. We need bigger data sets to understand it.
[67:45]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I have a question for you about. And I don't know if you have an answer for this, and this might sound silly, but, you know, my husband runs marathons in his spare time. He has done Boston, New York. I mean, he didn't train for New York and decided to run it, but, you know, some people make bad decisions. Do you think, and I've seen this within my own body. Do you think that glycogen repletion changes as we age?
[68:11]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I'm glad you replay.
[68:12]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I told you you might not know this answer.
[68:15]
Julia
Oh, man.
[68:18]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, the recovery process is what you're thinking about. Oh, man.
[68:21]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Just the ability to keep. You know, when you were young. Remember University of Illinois?
[68:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[68:26]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
You know that there's not much to do there.
[68:28]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, it's just exactly.
[68:30]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Lots of cornfields. And where did you go? Train. Where do you train when you're down there or did.
[68:34]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
What do you mean train?
[68:35]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
The rec center there.
[68:36]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Oh, no, we have a. No, it's. It's nice. We have a pretty nice research in.
[68:42]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Order to be able to train and get good recovery. I did. I was much younger, but my muscles were able to stay a lot fuller, a lot longer.
[68:53]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I know. I mean, I don't think that's my point. When we're studying anabolic resistance, I've Only studied muscle. I'm trying to think mechanistically related to the.
[69:02]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Doesn't make any sense.
[69:03]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I mean I think a lot of times the older adults. Like I said, when you look at the physiology.
[69:07]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I'm older.
[69:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, no, I'm not even saying that. I mean I'm. Like I said, I was thinking older.
[69:13]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
10 years older than me.
[69:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Older adults.
[69:15]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I was just kidding.
[69:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I was thinking about, you know, when you look at the physiology, you can't, you can't find it. But the antidotes, you know what I mean? Like when we study the muscle, you know, like the Todd and Scott Trappy at the human Performance lab at Ball State University. They've got their hands on some really, really old muscle and they do show the molecular signature. It seems that change a little bit. But that's only what the oldest of old.
[69:40]
Julia
Right.
[69:40]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And you know, the younger folks. I don't know what you know, you were talking about. I think your husband, he's. He's certainly not in that age range at all. You know, where you would see what's becoming more compromised is more like collagen. So the force transfer proteins becomes more compromised. I, I would say that. But I mean that's an interesting question. I mean, I don't know.
[70:01]
Julia
Yeah.
[70:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I haven't seen any data performance standpoint.
[70:04]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
It doesn't seem, it doesn't seem.
[70:05]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But I'm saying. But anecdotally my point is, is like what you. I've talked to strength and conditioning professionals. When you look at the physiology, you don't, you don't notice it. Like you can't find it. Like what you're telling me you can't find it.
[70:17]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But I see it and I hear it.
[70:18]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I believe you. But I, I think we underestimate the integrity of her connective tissues and you know, and, and the inability to. Because they don't like to remodel.
[70:29]
Julia
Right.
[70:29]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Very size it. Is it half of. And actually who is that? Do you.
[70:36]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Julia, do you know Keith Barr does.
[70:37]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
A lot of this work?
[70:38]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. And he was saying that UC Davis.
[70:40]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That's right.
[70:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So I mean when you, you know, muscle college bone collagen, it's, it's, it's interesting. It's just like the core of it.
[70:48]
Julia
Right.
[70:48]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Doesn't seem to remodel. The, the outside of it seems to remodel. But like the, the major force of it. I think when you encounter so many insults on that particular tissue, you just, I think it does compromise performance.
[71:00]
Julia
Right.
[71:00]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So I mean you could have a beautiful Meyer for Briller protein pool. But if you can't get that force out of the muscle, it's a problem.
[71:06]
Julia
Right?
[71:07]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah, I guess. That is fascinating. We always talk about muscle protein synthesis, probably. Or myofibular. Yeah, protein synthesis. Because it's fast.
[71:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[71:15]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And collagen.
[71:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. You just. So that's my point. We are a system. So I think the issue is that we don't, you know, as you. It just. That tissue just becomes insulted through the years.
[71:26]
Julia
Right.
[71:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
You get all those catabolic insults on it rather, you know, through injury.
[71:29]
Julia
Right.
[71:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It doesn't like to repair itself. And then like I said, you just, it's. You just can't function. But. Yeah, that's. That's a great question. I mean, I, I admittedly, I. I don't study glycogen on a high level. I'll leave that to some of my colleagues. But it's. But it is an interesting.
[71:46]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But you do.
[71:46]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Interesting point.
[71:47]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
You do teach on performance. Is there anything that. Again, you're not really on social media at all.
[71:53]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No.
[71:54]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
From feedback from your students, do you find that there's something that is vastly different from academic perspective versus what someone thinks, Whether it's the amount of protein endurance athlete needs or. Yeah. Anything like that. That would be helpful for the audience.
[72:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. All I know is every time I leave class, for some reason, my students always stand up and just give me a applause. I'm like, not, not again. Guys, you don't have to do this again. You know what, you know, the, the dogma or the, you know, the. What's. I think Stu Phillips sometimes says the bro. Science. What's your question is what's different academically?
[72:40]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Everything's meaning, do you find?
[72:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Well, the big thing we got to counter is, you know, the biggest thing I have to talk about is, you know, what they're really surprised about is the protein requirements between a weightlifter versus an endurance athlete.
[72:55]
Julia
Right.
[72:56]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
This whole concept of, you know, optimal versus maximal. These kind of concepts.
[73:03]
Julia
Right.
[73:03]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And like I said, there's no problem with eating protein in excess. If that's what you want to do, do it. There's. For a healthy kidney, I can handle it.
[73:11]
Julia
Right.
[73:12]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But my point is, you're creating. It's a. That's a maximal way to eat.
[73:17]
Julia
Right.
[73:17]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
If you want to eat maximally, go for it. I don't care. It really impacts me very little.
[73:20]
Julia
Right.
[73:22]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
If you want to eat optimally, here's some things to think about.
[73:25]
Julia
Right.
[73:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Because a maximum response is how I view it is just shovel in as much food protein as you want make. You know, just eliminate anything about requirement, right, because you just overshot it and let, let your body eliminate the waste.
[73:41]
Julia
Right.
[73:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So just get high oxidative rates.
[73:44]
Julia
Right?
[73:44]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
That's fine. You can do that. That's, that's great. But guess what, like I said, your gut now is going to take more of it. You're going to have higher splegnic extraction, you're going to have an enhancement in your proteolytic enzymes. It's not a problem per se, but you know, when you go to eat your next meal, let's say not most of us though, has zero issue of finding food protein in the US but let's say you've been eating maximally. So, you know, 30, 40 grams of food protein per meal. Now You've only encountered 15.
[74:13]
Julia
Right.
[74:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It's going to be different metabolically than somebody who's been eating 15 to 20 grams of food protein as part of their normal pattern and eating more optimally because, you know, I see it all the time, 1.6 grams per kilogram per day.
[74:27]
Julia
Right.
[74:27]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
That's, that's the recommendation for weightlifters I see online all the time. Maybe upwards of 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram per day. But have you ever looked at that confidence interval, that 95% confidence interval? Why not recommend. Why you, why are you going that way? Why, why not go this way as opposed to 1.2? Yeah. Or why not eat at the lower end of that confidence interval? Why?
[74:51]
Julia
Why?
[74:51]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I don't know. Why, why, why is a translation by default, eat that way because you could equally eat this way. That's what that data is telling me. They just looked at the breaking point and it came at 1.6.
[75:02]
Julia
Right.
[75:03]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So you know, though the read. I know why they're doing it because it's easy translation, right? Because you know, they're just adding in eat 1.6 to 2.2. That's an excess. But it's how much easier what happens if.
[75:20]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
So if you give, if you tell someone, let's say we tell someone the opposite and we say, okay, eat at that low end. If, you know, I was looking at the healthy eating index, you've seen that and it said 45% of individuals were below the.
[75:38]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Problem with the healthy. Yeah, that's a diet quality scoring system is what you're looking at. The problem with that, it's clamped, you know, how easy if you're eating one point like I've had participants eat one, you know, 1.0 grams per kilogram per day. HEI scores are all the same.
[75:55]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But I guess my question is you'd.
[75:56]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Have to unclamp that scoring system to really understand it.
[75:58]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But regardless of that, then what if we were to think, okay, how do we design a diet that would be, quote, more optimal? I mean, if 98% of people aren't eating enough fruits and vegetables and the majority of their diet right now is mostly refined foods and let's say we reduce protein energy sources, what do you.
[76:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Think you do food swaps? I mean, you're, I mean, why, why when we do, when we do a recommendation, it's always eat more food protein instead of trying to manage the plate.
[76:26]
Julia
Right?
[76:27]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
It's, it's difficult. I mean, yeah, it's difficult with patients for sure.
[76:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, it is. So give better management of the play. I mean, I, I would argue or do, if that's working, do that. I don't, I mean, eat 2.2.2. You know, feel your whole, you know, go to the buffet and just fill it up. I really, like I said, I. That's just a maximal way to, way to eat.
[76:50]
Julia
Right?
[76:50]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It really is. You know, and again, from a practitioner standpoint, sometimes it's easier just to make it simple.
[76:58]
Julia
Right.
[76:58]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Aim high. Easy translation.
[77:01]
Julia
Right.
[77:01]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But do you worry about, so if the average American eats 300 grams of carbs a day, do you worry about where, you know, I think that the majority of the food we're over consuming is processed.
[77:12]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, of course, yeah, ultra processed. But that's, that's more education, you know what I mean? But you think educating people to eat more food, proteins, the right education.
[77:20]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I think we have a lot of work to do.
[77:22]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I don't think that's eating protein in excess. I don't think is, is the education standpoint understanding that, you know, different, you know, different foods are, you know, in terms of the protein quality, how they're interacting, it's, it's all education. I mean, just pretending like, you know, people can't learn is crazy. Oh, the reason I do that, just for ease of translation. Well, that's fine, but why not educate them then? That's our state, that's our point as a, as a, but just running around saying you need this much food, protein in excess. I'm not saying it's going to hurt them, but that's, that's just a crazy recommendation. I just told you with a weightlifter, you're just, you're just making a system completely inefficient. If you want to make that Recommendation, perhaps an endurance athlete.
[78:09]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah. Right. So if I think about muscle health, yeah. The biggest driver is likely training, right. Some kind of stimulus. This is definitely whether it's resistance or endurance. With endurance, how should they structure their nutrition?
[78:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I mean, you know, I always. The biggest variable, you know, just, just to put this in it, you know, everybody, I come on nutrition podcast sometimes they, you know, they want nutrition. You know, the biggest thing I can say is be consistent with your exercise, right? Find something, you do find something that makes you smile, right? And that's the first thing I think that's the most important thing we can do as practitioners is try to identify activities we, you know, something we can make somebody be consistent with.
[78:54]
Julia
Right.
[78:54]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Nutrition is important, don't get me wrong. But that, that's a really big piece now. You know, a lot of times, you know, we're talking to, you know, when I'm talking to athletes and whatnot, that's not, that's not the problem because they're rather being coached to or as part of their training program. They have to be pretty active. So when we're thinking about an endurance athlete, right. A little different scenario than a weightlifter. They're not fundamentally anabolic, they're really catabolic, right? So you know what happens when an endurance athlete goes for a run, right? They're running, you know, for what have you, whatever, let's say 60 minutes, right? Pretty intense, 70 VO2 peak, what have you. You know, a lot of times we think protein as an oxidative fuel is non existent, right. That's why we use all these non protein RQs and everything. Or re sobsters my drawer now. But protein is, that's a pretty overarching word, right? And even Don's big on this, right? I think I've even heard him say, yeah, Don has this funny cool saying that he's like, you know, pro. You know, same protein requirements. Like saying a vitamin requirement, right? You eat one, you have them all, right? It's the same with, you know, if I eat vitamin D, I'm good, but it's, that's not real, right? The same with protein, right? You really got to zoom in and look at different amino acids. And so, you know, some of the interesting ones with endurance exercise and from an amino acid metabolism standpoint, right, you got, you got alanine, glutamine, leucine. So if we just focus on that, right? So when an endurance athlete is running, right, they might not getting a lot of protein oxidation, but they're getting. Losing oxidation, right. We're pulling those carbon skeletons out to make acetyl coa to run them through the Krebs cycle.
[80:46]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
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[81:56]
Julia
Right?
[81:57]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And then what they do, they stop the exercise or they stop exercising, right? So they have all this oxidative amino acid waste that's induced by exercise. Now they need to eat food protein in the post exercise state, right. So they need to, not only that food protein has to do two jobs. It got to replace that leucine oxidative loss. Okay. And you also need to provide enough substrate to, to support that remodeling response. So our work has shown that if we take, you know, if we take an endurance athlete, have them run for an hour, look at leucine, that balance, right? Which oxidation is going to play a factor in that. So guess what happens? Endurance athlete runs, they get into a negative leucine balance, right. So catabolic, we feed them food. We couldn't recover that leucine net balance because that food is fighting two battles. It has to replace that leucine oxidative loss and like I said, provide enough substrate. So now we're trying to think about what strategies can we use for an endurance athlete because they also got to be concerned about carbohydrate, right? So what strategies can we do to help this endurance athlete recover? They're losing that balance, right? So that's some stuff we're working on now. That's some of that stuff's exciting, I guess you're asking me about. Yeah, the exciting stuff. How can we manipulate protein timing? How can we manipulate protein source to help recover that a weightlifter is, it's just kind of easy, right? A weightlifter can do, they can just work out the point, you know, they should work out, you know, make sure they're getting a lot of type 2 fiber activation, bulk fiber recruitment. Make sure all your muscles sensitive to substrate amino acid substrate. Eat something. You know, I always say after weightlifting, you know, what's the best kind of protein to eat? Well, the kind you put in your mouth, right? Whatever you want to put in your mouth, it's going to work. And endurance athletes, a little more.
[83:54]
Julia
More.
[83:54]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It's a little more interesting in terms of, from a, from a meal manipulation standpoint.
[84:00]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
In my opinion, we see differences in muscle protein synthesis because do they separate the type fibers out or is it.
[84:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Just Luke Van Loons on some of that? It's a lot of work. I remember I was like, when I was a postdoc, I went over there and I was gung ho, right? I was like, luke, I want to do some fiber type specific work. And he was just like, no, you don't.
[84:21]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
And then you go, oh, you were right, you were right.
[84:23]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
He just was like, no, you don't, you don't want to do that. No, we don't. I mean, I, I, you know, I'm not the individual synthesis rates and stuff. I think scientifically and for basic sciences that's great. But I, I, I like our, our because it depends what you're, it depends on the research question. That's how deep you need to go. Now, is there a particular impairment? You know, I mean, that, it's just, but how does that impact our recommendation that, you know, it just really depends on what you're trying to accomplish, what tools you're going to use. So I did want to learn it and in my defense, I was like, yeah, I want to do some individual synthesis rates and fiber type specific synthesis.
[85:00]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That lasted very short.
[85:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, he literally wouldn't let me. He's like, no, you don't. I was like, okay.
[85:06]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Do you, Julia, do you have any questions? I know we're probably getting close to time. Yeah.
[85:12]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
If you want to talk about the vegan study.
[85:15]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah, it's up, it's up to him.
[85:17]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I'll talk about whatever you'd like.
[85:19]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yes.
[85:19]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I have no agenda here.
[85:21]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Oh, well, so fascinating. How are you? Do you need caffeine? Do you need anything?
[85:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, I'm good.
[85:27]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Okay, so we have this one.
[85:31]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So I think priority wise of things that we haven't really drilled down into are the vegan study or the food matrix? A little deeper. I think priority wise of those two.
[85:43]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I would prioritize the vegan study over the. The other stuff.
[85:47]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I mean, the vegan studies or the food matrix stuff is interesting though. It is really interesting.
[85:51]
Julia
I have.
[85:53]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I mean, the vegan stuff we kind of went over, didn't we? I mean, it was there.
[85:56]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Specific.
[85:56]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Well, it's just your recent, most recent study.
[85:59]
Julia
All right.
[86:01]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I mean, I can do both. It's fine. I can do quick shot at both. More like.
[86:05]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I mean, for that study. Really, it's.
[86:09]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Well, sort of what I alluded to. I said these are highly controlled studies. Right? So we talked about Luke versus my study. So I mean, I can talk about it. I mean, the point is that these are highly controlled studies, so we made them protein dense, I think is what I mean. A question we had Yesterday was why 1.1 grams per day? Remember? It's like, why did you choose that.
[86:29]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Number is that this is what people are normally eating?
[86:31]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, well, like I, you know, I know you got. Because they don't need it. That's the problem. They don't need that much food. 1.6. Our clinical studies have shown that I can feed people 1.6 to 1.8 or I can feed people 1.0. The resistance training induced adaptations are the same between the two. There's no difference because again, resistance exercise is fundamentally anabolic. You're just over prescribing food protein for that population.
[87:01]
Julia
Right.
[87:01]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So for one, the only reason, the only way we were going to achieve. My biggest thing is they didn't need to eat white food. Feed somebody more food. Protein makes zero sense to me. But the second thing is, is to achieve 1.6 to 2.2 some excessive recommendation, I'd have, I would have had to use supplemental protein. So pea protein. See, we didn't use any supplements, isolated plant supplements. So that was the one beautiful part of that study was all food based.
[87:30]
Julia
Right.
[87:31]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so 1.1 was chose because. All right, we're saying RDA is a deficiency. We'll give you a little more. We just chose the lower end of that confidence interval because all our studies show that's. Show me one study where 1.6 nobody's been able to. That's just some magic number somebody's made up from that random meta analysis. I love Stu Phillips. And again, keep this off. But that number is just a random number.
[87:57]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Make sure, will you Mark, to keep this off. Math. Yeah, I want to make sure because.
[88:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It'S, it's Just a random number is the only thing.
[88:05]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Cuz Don is. He swears he's like every study. But actually you're right.
[88:09]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Show me one.
[88:10]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
You're right. You're right. Actually, you're right.
[88:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
There's no. I mean, that's actually no study. This is. Let me tell you something.
[88:17]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
He said the difference between point eight, it's like point eight and you're right, it's one point. Is it one point one?
[88:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
He literally said he. He thinks there's a line around 1.1.
[88:30]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
You're right.
[88:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Right. I love dawn too, but I got the data.
[88:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah.
[88:33]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Nobody else has. No, there's nobody. And let me tell you how crazy people are. This is how crazy the field is. Instead of so what, what, what's the subsequent studies done? Instead of testing the lower end of that confidence interval, instead we're like, let's go three times the rda. Is that, does that help? Let's go five times the rda. Of course, that's absurd. Instead of going this way to test closer to the rda, they want to go that way. And then they just say, no, 2.2 or 1.6 was good enough. Eating 3.6, 4.5. I can't remember the exact. But nobody's went this way. Okay. And the other issue is that exercise physiologists shouldn't be doing this work. I have registered dietitians on my research team. So, you know, it's always, it's comical because guess what these, a lot of our studies are doing or people in the field are doing. They do a random three day recall at the beginning of their intervention, they do one at the end. Boom. Magically. They ate the prescription. No, they didn't. It's just that you didn't get enough data throughout that 12 week intervention to actually show what your participants were eating. And that's what hurt us. You know, everybody. Because one of my original studies where we landed on one a little above 1.0 grams per kilogram per day versus the 1.6 where we showed no difference in the training induced adaptations. They were like, why didn't you use the rda? I tried. They wouldn't do it. And anybody who says they did, they just didn't get enough data.
[90:05]
Julia
Right.
[90:05]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
If I would have just took two rec, like the beginning, the end. And yeah, we did a great job. Or we had to pivot to feeding everybody all the meals and even then they still want to bounce, try to bounce off of them. Because if you use dietary counseling and just a couple prescribed Meals they're not going to do. I mean, participants in, in the Midwest in particular, they're chasing food protein.
[90:30]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Totally.
[90:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. So the reason I chose 1.1 is because there's no evidence that you need more. There's zero evidence. This is some magical thing the Internet has made up and has stuck to.
[90:42]
Julia
Right.
[90:43]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Because they could have equally. Like, my point was there was a range there. They could have equally chose the lower end of the range, but they chose not to. You know, in terms of.
[90:52]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah. And what does Don say after that? But that's exactly right. He's like, there is no evidence of. He said, always above.
[90:59]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It doesn't account for aging, though.
[91:02]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah, well, but he was saying, like, it does. Yeah, interesting.
[91:05]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. I don't think, I mean, if you can get these older adults to, to undergo weightlifting. I, I think. I, I don't. There's still no. There's not enough evidence to say that I shouldn't say that. But yeah, interesting though. Yeah. Well, it's.
[91:21]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
So do you think that the. Okay, so I'll ask this question for real.
[91:24]
Julia
Okay.
[91:25]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Okay.
[91:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
This is back on.
[91:27]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah. Okay, wait. Also, all the stuff you said was just so good. But fine, we can go back on. Okay. Do you think that the RDA is a worthy number?
[91:38]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No, I mean, I, you know, I like, like I said, Wayne. Professor Wayne Campbell's approach, he. His argument is that. And I agree with him 100%. Like I said, he's. He's also one of the guys I admire in the field. We got to stop beating up on the protein rda.
[91:56]
Julia
Right.
[91:56]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Why?
[91:57]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It's sort of, you know, it does what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to prevent a deficiency. It's very good at doing that. You know, we put a lot of pressure on it, in my opinion. Like, I always view the protein RDA as a starting point.
[92:11]
Julia
Right.
[92:12]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
When they developed it, there was not a lot of information on it. It does what it's supposed to do. It does prevent a pro. It does prevent a protein deficiency, but it wasn't supposed to, in my opinion, ever account for. What about a weightlifter? What about, you know. Well, it doesn't. It doesn't supposed to account for older adults or perhaps clinically compromised people. What's it made for? Rda? Healthy adults.
[92:37]
Julia
Right.
[92:38]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So a healthy adult. What's it going to do. Going to prevent a protein deficiency. It's was never made to capsule everything. An older adult, an obese adult, anybody who's weightlifting, anybody who's doing an endurance exercise. Right. So I think it does a good job. What I was supposed to do. My other issue is that instead of beating up on the RDA experimentally or verbally, I guess we need to test it experimentally.
[93:05]
Julia
Right.
[93:06]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Instead, we always, especially in the exercise physiology field, we always like to test everything in excess.
[93:17]
Julia
Right.
[93:17]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And I, you know, I think, you know, one of the common numbers is that 1.6 grams per kilogram per day. And one of the things I always like to say, you know, or they like to test this way.
[93:28]
Julia
Right.
[93:28]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
They want to keep going in excess. But I'm like, well, why not test the other. The other end? And I think that's important. Who has really tested the protein RDA from a, you know, from a healthy weightlifting perspective? Who's tested it?
[93:42]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Well, well, Don did, but he went to 1.6. So don for years to some of those first studies, and, you know, I think they're really well done. And he looked at the RDA.8 grams.
[93:53]
Julia
Yeah.
[93:53]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Then he looked at doubling the RDA, which again, is what you said, a bit higher. 1.6 grams. And all of the. And they were isocaloric and.
[94:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I remember. Yeah. That's some old work. I know what you're saying. I mean, it's just. Yeah, my. I guess my only point is, is that the protein RDA is a starting point. My other thing is it's hard to find somebody who's eating the protein RDA, in my hands, are always eating 1.1 to 1.2. My biggest objective is using weightlifting to enhance that protein efficiency. My other argument is that, you know, perhaps if you're doing other modes of exercise, that number might vary a little bit. For example, an endurance athlete, I think.
[94:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Do they need more or less.
[94:34]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I think they need more food protein than a weightlifter in terms of an endurance. Somebody's habitually doing endurance exercise. But we also got to account for what's one aspect of. Of an endurance athlete. They usually have high caloric intakes.
[94:48]
Julia
Right.
[94:49]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So it's not that number they need to be concerned about. Again, I think it's the timing after that initial. So if you just got back from a big run, you know, I always hear this, this concept of anabolic window, the prolonged nature of it. A weightlifter, it doesn't need to really worry about some particular anabolic window, but an endurance athlete is probably a little more important for them. Not only from a carbohydrate standpoint, we know that's important, but I would argue from a protein intake standpoint, too to help them recover.
[95:22]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That's fascinating because we are definitely not hearing about that online. I think that you're hearing that the anabolic window no longer matters unless potentially you're doing maybe exhaustive exercise or you, you are lower on the total protein intake.
[95:38]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But it never, I mean it was an interesting concept. It never mattered. I mean, the work we've done with Stew in terms of that anabolic window, we've showed it for years that it's been prolonged. I've never really understood where that concept even derived from. I think it was just, I don't know, I mean, if you wanted to eat something after your weightlifting bout, go for it again.
[95:55]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But are there any other groups? So endurance, how long do you think that anabolic window is?
[96:01]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No. You're gonna make me put a number on it? No, no, I, I don't know. I mean with the glycogen resynthesis, I mean it's, it's, you know, it is short. I mean usually you want to eat within the, you know, the one to two hour window.
[96:12]
Julia
Right?
[96:13]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That's what I would have guessed in.
[96:15]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Terms of this leucine balance. And it, it, I don't, I don't know. But I would argue that we need to be able to recover those oxidative losses. So the other concern is make sure that in that post exercise meal, you know, this is probably. Well, you know, I advocate a lot for, you know, food first approaches, but food first doesn't mean food only. And sometimes people, you know, let's see, I was like, no, that's, that's crazy.
[96:40]
Julia
You're right.
[96:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
My only point we're using a food first approach is that everybody likes to go to supplements, right? That's just where they want to go to that way. But it's like, well, first, you know, think about this. But for an endurance athlete, I, I, you know, it's not like I said for them, I think we do, they do need to use something that's rapidly. We need to get those amino acids in circulation quick. Isolated food proteins are going to be the best at it.
[97:05]
Julia
Right.
[97:06]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so, you know, obviously when you co ingest carbohydrate with even isolated food source, you're going to reduce that acute amplitude of change. So you're going to, in terms of the leucine profile and amino acid profile profile. So I always, I think, you know, we need to test this experimentally. I think having a rapid source of amino acids carbohydrate blend immediately after that endurance exercise bout will help. And then Return to that food if you can depending on your training, you know, mode of training then that's where you can return back to that food. Food first approach. But I think that timing of that initial meal is real important for the them.
[97:44]
Julia
Right.
[97:44]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
The overall amount they're probably fine on. That's my point because endurance athletes eat plenty of food protein on a daily basis. But where I think they might not be understanding is that that post exercise window for them is. Is is probably important to help them recover loosing that balance and support that.
[98:04]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
How big do you think that meal has to be? Is it just based on their overall calories or.
[98:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I mean. I mean we haven't done. Yeah. I mean what we need to understand now we're do some manipulation of sources to see if you know, to see if you know again. I usually, you know it's always interesting way always got supported as being the best food protein. But when you look. When you look at some of Ebori's work he's shown that casein Right. For a weightlifter most likely is probably not that you study weightlifting but arguably is probably really you know do the prolonged nature of some slowly releasing food protein. Whole foods will do the same. It's probably better to support protein balance throughout a prolonged recovery period.
[98:51]
Julia
Right.
[98:52]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But for some reason the weightlifters really liked whey but really they concentrate something that's more prolonged release would probably be better. But for a weight or for an endurance athlete I think the way or something really fast is going to be really important for them.
[99:06]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I love that.
[99:07]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I think, I mean I'm just speculating here.
[99:09]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I love that. Do we have any other. I want to make sure we stay on time for him because we're over time.
[99:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Okay.
[99:17]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That's so fascinating.
[99:18]
Julia
Yeah.
[99:20]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
The other thing I think just for you guys is own knowledge.
[99:23]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Wait, is it. Are you sure? Because what you say is very important. Is it really for our own knowledge or should we.
[99:29]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I just wanted to note quickly on this, this, this food matrix.
[99:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah.
[99:33]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Thing.
[99:33]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Let's do it.
[99:34]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I think it's important for everyone. So.
[99:39]
Julia
Right.
[99:39]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So the food matrix is this fancy term. It's been around for ages but it's just been showing up recently where it sort of describes the. The physical structure of foods but also the nutrient. Nutrient interactions within it.
[99:56]
Julia
Right.
[99:56]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So physical structure we can manipulate the food matrix by. You know Luke has done brilliant work in that area cooking food.
[100:03]
Julia
Right.
[100:04]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Mincing up the food.
[100:05]
Julia
Right.
[100:06]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Where I've been more interested is trying to take advantage of the nutrient Nutrient interactions with a food to potentiate the use of the dietary amino acids. Right. Trying to optimize a food.
[100:19]
Julia
Right.
[100:19]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So trying to prevent, I think I talked about earlier that, you know, if you just eat isolated food protein, you can use whey as an example.
[100:27]
Julia
Right.
[100:27]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
It's not that interesting because it's just amino acids. Right. So what's it do? It goes boom in terms of its postprandial amino acid spike.
[100:34]
Julia
Right.
[100:34]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
That big spike, you're going to get a lot of amino acids in quite quickly, but you're also going to get a big signal for oxidation.
[100:41]
Julia
Right.
[100:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Food is kind of cool is because it's, it's more prolonged.
[100:46]
Julia
Right.
[100:46]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So you're not getting that big leucine oxidative spike in the beginning of the postprandial period within that first two hours. But some of our work has also shown that we can potentiate the use of, of the amino acids within a meal. And we showed this by eating, you know, whole eggs versus egg whites. Right. So eating whole eggs potentiated the anabolic response more so than eating an ISO nitrogenous amount of egg white.
[101:13]
Julia
Right.
[101:13]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Which was interesting. I did.
[101:14]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I thought that was fascinating.
[101:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Well, I remember not to throw Luke Van Loon under the bus. He was like. Because this was one of. When I got to Illinois, you know, we were doing some carbohydrate co ingestion stuff with him. He's like, you already know it's not going to make a difference.
[101:28]
Julia
Right.
[101:28]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Or we did some fat co ingestion. But the cool stuff with that was what we're doing, we were taking isolated fat and isolated casein. Because one of my big missions over with Luke was trying to make casein more anabolic.
[101:42]
Julia
Right.
[101:43]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So we were adding.
[101:44]
Julia
Right.
[101:44]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
We were trying to do different co ingestion strategies. And one of the strategies was, hey, what happens when we add lipids to casein? Can we potentiate the anabolic response? And we couldn't.
[101:54]
Julia
Right.
[101:55]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So it was interesting when, when we ate a whole egg, we actually were able to potentiate it.
[102:01]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Do you think it's because it's not based on the macronutrients, it's based on, say the, the other additional compounds in there?
[102:09]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. So yeah, that's the million dollar question.
[102:11]
Julia
Right.
[102:12]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
You always say in that whole egg study, what's in that egg? If I knew that, then I could make a super egg.
[102:18]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Right. Isn't there like full. Not folas, not folastatin. But there's something that they. Someone sent it to me. It was a compound in the egg. That was supposed to be very anabolic again.
[102:32]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, I mean we tried to understand it. We, you know, with, we tried, we couldn't, we couldn't identify something. Then we followed that up with a salmon study where we fed after weightlifting young adults, 20 grams. So I literally, it was, it was funny, I had a salmon flu in because I wanted a big piece of salmon.
[102:54]
Julia
Right.
[102:54]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so I, we butchered it up and then we sent that piece of salmon. So all the participants had the same salmon.
[103:02]
Julia
Right.
[103:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So we, we sent that salmon away to get analyzed and we, we figured out all the cool stuff in salmon. And then what we did was we re engineered that salmon and an isolated beverage so we had salmon versus isolated nutrients.
[103:17]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Fascinating.
[103:18]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And then, you know, I think I was underpowered, but we saw an effect size. It was trending that way. That salmon potentiated the anabolic response more than eating the same macronutrients in free form.
[103:29]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That's incredible.
[103:31]
Julia
Right?
[103:31]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. So I was like, it's probably something with this lipid dense food matrix. And this is more, this is more recent work I'm trying to understand. So this was, this was in abstract form. This stuff is under review right now. So one of the things I was interested in was a lipid rich meat matrix.
[103:50]
Julia
Right.
[103:51]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So that's an interesting point in that, you know, when I was thinking about that, right. An egg and salmon that was sort of really untouched, really, we didn't process it at all. I mean it comes.
[104:04]
Julia
Right.
[104:05]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Ready to eat directly.
[104:07]
Julia
Right.
[104:07]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But when we're thinking about even a dairy matrix or even a meat matrix, especially when it's ground, Right. What do they do? They, they sort of, they ground up the meat and then they add in fat trimmings to try to make it more or less, you know, lipid rich or lean. But I was interested.
[104:25]
Julia
Okay.
[104:26]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
When we take a lipid dense food matrix or. Yeah. Lipid and protein dense food matrix in the form of ground meat, is that going to help the post exercise anabolic response?
[104:40]
Julia
Right.
[104:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Versus a lean source of meat? Because our other work suggested that a lipid dense food matrix is really important to help potentiate a weightlifter's myofibrillar protein synthetic response. What we showed was that actually the lipid rich. So the 80% meat, ground meat. So that's common.
[105:02]
Julia
Right.
[105:02]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
There's 80 and then there's. In terms of the 8020 blend, if you will, that actually impaired the post exercise muscle response compared to the lean source of meat. So isoentrogenous.
[105:15]
Julia
Right.
[105:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So in this Case eating a lipid dense food matrix made up of ground meat immediately after the exercise boat impaired the anabolic response versus a lean matrix which is exact contrast to what we showed with the eggs and salmon. Yeah, so.
[105:34]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But the same amount.
[105:35]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah. Everything was ISO nitrogenous. Right. So there's something with that lipid dense food matrix in the form of a ground meat. And again, I think it's because we played around with that matrix. Right. It's no longer.
[105:48]
Julia
Right.
[105:48]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
We manipulate that. Not. I mean, that's a ground meat matrix.
[105:51]
Julia
Right.
[105:52]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
In terms of its physical. I mean, that's how it comes so interesting. It is interesting.
[105:56]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
But do you think it's. Wait, I have to think about this. Is this. Do you think it's because of the. The actual grinding or do you think that it's because it was. Because that exists essentially in nature. Right. If you.
[106:10]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Well, an egg and the salmon. I mean we directly. That was, like I said, unprocessed. The meat was heavily processed.
[106:15]
Julia
Right.
[106:16]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So Luke has shown that, like I said, mincing meat processing. Yeah, it is. And it usually helps digestion. Yeah, that's right. And Lucas showed that comparing Mitch meat versus a ground steak.
[106:29]
Julia
Right.
[106:30]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So this comparison was an 8020 blend of ground meat versus fascinating. A lean porcelain piece of ground meat. Okay. So ISO nitrogenous and then a carbohydrate control. But the. So this was post exercise and sort of goes in the face of what I just said, what I said earlier, that after weightlifting the. The kind of protein you eat, you know, the best kind of protein you use, the kind you put in your mouth. But in this case, we saw. We saw it blunted the response.
[106:58]
Julia
Okay.
[106:59]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And so this was showing me that again, because sometimes people want to argue that, you know, I've had this before in the review process. Well, you already showed a lipid dense food matrix works. But I was. That's crazy. I mean, you got to test different food matrices to truly understand it.
[107:14]
Julia
Right.
[107:14]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And here's example where a lipid dense food matrix actually blunted the post exercise anabolic response.
[107:22]
Julia
Right.
[107:22]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And it's because, you know, like I said, I think it depends on the extent of processing that's occurring. I think in this case, you know, in one of the mechanisms behind this, you know, when we look at the, you know, unlike the salmon and. Or the egg, this whole leucine trigger hypothesis.
[107:40]
Julia
Right.
[107:40]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
The salmon or the. Or the salmon or the egg leucine trigger hypothesis didn't matter at all.
[107:46]
Julia
Right.
[107:46]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Obviously with the isolated food sources, you're going to get a Bigger leucine spike, but yet we saw a bigger anabolic response in the, the egg and the salmon conditions. But in this case, when we do the correlations between the C max. So the peak leucine concentrations in relation to the anabolic response, there's a strong, strong correlation.
[108:08]
Julia
Right.
[108:08]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
So the leucine trigger hypothesis mattered for this ground pork situation. Doesn't matter for. So it depends on the food is my point. So there's always this question of. I always get asked, how significant is the leucine trigger hypothesis? Depends. Depends on the food, depends on who you are. Depends probably on how much muscle mass you got. It's, it's. So it depends.
[108:32]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Ordinary. I, We've never really talked about it in that kind of detail.
[108:37]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yes.
[108:38]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Do you have a hypothesis as to what it could be or why?
[108:43]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I do. But, you know, maybe we'll save that for another podcast.
[108:46]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
The Cliffhanger.
[108:48]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I can't give you all my tips and tricks. Yeah.
[108:52]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
That is so fascinating.
[108:53]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, yeah. No, I thought it was interesting. I thought, I thought. Well, because I'm always advocating. I've been around talking about the food matrix and this was funny in this case with the ground pork matrix. I was wrong.
[109:06]
Julia
Right.
[109:06]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
And my students, I, I don't know if I mentioned it here on this podcast, but my, I have some students who, you know, I'm pretty easygoing, so they just tell me what they feel. The other day they were like, nick, you've been wrong on your last three hypotheses, but it makes it fun. Right?
[109:25]
Julia
Yeah.
[109:25]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
I mean, when you're. Well, one of the, one of the things I was wrong about was that some of the vegan stuff, because originally I thought an animal based meal was going to be better on the anabolic response than vegan based meals.
[109:40]
Julia
Right.
[109:41]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
But in my defense, I did design that study that was recently published in 2017. It just didn't get published till recently. So the sort of. The environment changed a little bit from here or there. But yeah. So I mean that's, that's just something, you know, I always think about and I wish there was these clean on and off switches, but there's really not.
[109:59]
Julia
Right.
[110:01]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
These precision nutrition notions, especially with performance nutrition. You can give these overarching sort of recommendations, but it really depends. And that's sort of some of the concepts you were making. You know, as a practitioner. It's hard. Hard.
[110:13]
Julia
Right.
[110:13]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Because each, each situation is going to be a little different recommendation. I think you just, It's. Yeah, it's cool. We're getting more Information on it. We'll figure it out.
[110:22]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Well, I'll be on standby as you continue to get the kinetics of all the food matrixes and be here for a while.
[110:28]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Okay.
[110:29]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Yeah, but really, it really is extraordinary and I think that your work, I'm, I'm really excited. I know that you're interested in a lot of the performance. I am fascinated to know over time, if you ever look at this, but the food matrix within obese skeletal muscle.
[110:45]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, actually. You like this? Actually, yeah. We got, we just completed that study for writing that paper up now. So we. To your point, can we use the food matrix as a clinical tool to help overcome anabolic resistance? So take advantage because. So I didn't really mention it because it's sort of a byproduct.
[111:05]
Julia
Right.
[111:05]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Of the, in terms of the anabolic resistance, all the stuff we're talking about, some of the factors, mechanistically, ultimately those are contributing to inflammation.
[111:13]
Julia
Right.
[111:13]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Chronic low grade inflammation. So how can we manipulate a food matrix to, to take advantage or try to help modulate some of those mechanisms and help correct anabolic resistance? Yeah, so I didn't mention that work. Yeah. We're hopefully my students at home finishing up that manuscript now. So we did, we did, we did address that question recently.
[111:38]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Is that a cliffhanger or.
[111:40]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Better be another cliffhanger. Yeah.
[111:42]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
I'm dying to know, I'm dying to know how we use certain foods.
[111:46]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah.
[111:48]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
To overcome that.
[111:49]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Yeah, it depends.
[111:52]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
Well, Dr. Nick Bird, thank you so much.
[111:54]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
No problem. Yeah, happy to be here. It's been fun.
[111:56]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
It's really eye opening and I think that you, you challenge a lot of scientific thinking and you challenge yourself and I think it's really noble.
[112:06]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Okay, I appreciate that.
[112:07]
Julia
Yeah.
[112:07]
Dr. Nicholas Byrd
Like I said, thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to everyone. It's always fun.
[112:12]
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
If this episode made you rethink what you thought you knew about obesity and protein, good, because building muscle isn't about following trends. It's about understanding your body's real needs and how they change with time, stress and, and training. Whether you're optimizing for strength, body composition, longevity, or recovery, Dr. Bird's work shows that details matter. Timing, quality, distribution. Vegan, non vegan, and yes, even the way you pair your foods. If someone you love is doing all the things quote right and still not making progress, send them this episode. It might be the insight they've been missing. Thank you for being here. See you next time.