← The Neuro Experience
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- [00:00]
Angelo Keeley
If you do not eat enough protein, you're actually going to start to eat away at your muscle. Protein is not equal.
- [00:07]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
My guest today is Angelo Keeley, co founder and CEO of Kion, a company.
- [00:12]
Louisa Nicola
Focused on human performance and foundational nutrition.
- [00:15]
Angelo Keeley
Less than 10% of protein is used for like, energy.
- [00:18]
Louisa Nicola
Where do you think we're going wrong?
- [00:19]
Angelo Keeley
We're thinking we need protein. What you really need are essential amino acids.
- [00:23]
Louisa Nicola
In this episode you'll learn how amino acids so support fat loss, muscle gain.
- [00:28]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
And energy in midlife.
- [00:29]
Angelo Keeley
Three grams of essential amino acids are equal to 20 grams of whey protein.
- [00:34]
Louisa Nicola
And why they are a critical tool.
- [00:35]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
For thriving as we age.
- [00:37]
Angelo Keeley
Studies of women in their 60s have shown that over the course of like three months doing nothing extra in terms of exercise, we're able to add 2.4 pounds of muscle on average, taking essential amino acids.
- [00:48]
Louisa Nicola
Unbelievable.
- [00:49]
Angelo Keeley
Honestly, steak on its own is not very anabolic. It doesn't stimulate that much protein synthesis.
- [00:54]
Louisa Nicola
You've just upset me so much talking.
- [00:58]
Angelo Keeley
About is nutrition on its own without any exercise being capable of building and maintaining muscle?
- [01:05]
Louisa Nicola
Who do I subscribe to?
- [01:06]
Angelo Keeley
Here's a really important take home point for people.
- [01:09]
Louisa Nicola
My name is Louisa Nicola, host of the Neuro Experience podcast and I'm thrilled to dive into this topic with you. Angelo, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast for several reasons. One is I'm completely obsessed with the Kion aminos. I have the watermelon flavor and I have it twice a day actually. The second reason I'm super excited to have you on is to really get to the bottom of the relationship between protein and fat loss and muscle building. One of the main questions that we get asked so often, especially, especially for my audience, which is generally the midlife female, you know, around the stage where things are looking a bit different, such as, you know, they're feeling a bit weaker, we're talking around 45 years old, maybe they' going through that perimenopause stage, they're feeling a bit weaker, they're starting to really take control of their nutrition. They know that bone mineral density is a very big factor that they need to protect. And one of the most concerning parts about all nutrition, especially on social media, is just how many different things we are told when it comes to fat loss, building muscle, how much protein to have. Is the RDA real, is it not? And we're all just so lost. So why don't we just start with understanding protein as a whole and how the relationship between protein and fat loss occurs.
- [02:37]
Angelo Keeley
Well, thanks Louisa, for having me on. And I love being part of this kind of conversation, and it's. It's definitely relevant for your audience. And I would just say, hopefully throughout this conversation, we'll probably go in, not tangents, but we'll probably go deep dives into some details. But maybe we can just keep trying to pull it out and keep it simple and keep it practical and not have it have to be, you know, a hard thing you have to, like, take notes about. Right. But really, you can leave this conversation feeling more empowered to your audience can leave this conversation feeling more empowered to just know what to do and to keep it simple and, you know, make the changes that actually can really help them. So protein, like, what. What is protein?
- [03:16]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
Literally?
- [03:16]
Angelo Keeley
Why or why protein? I think that's actually a really good place to start. So, you know, we get told and we hear, you need to. You need to eat more protein. You got to eat a gram of protein per pound of body weight or whatever other number they're telling us. Or maybe read a article that says, no, that's overstated. It's like half that amount. So I think again, maybe we just take a step back and we understand what protein is in the body and how it maybe changes for us over our lifetime and different needs that we have for it. And I think that might just empower everyone to think for themselves a little bit and be more diligent in how they listen to all these folks talking to them. When we eat food, you know, there's micronutrients, things like vitamins and minerals and all that kind of stuff. That's why oftentimes we're told to eat things like fruits and vegetables. There's also fiber. There's a lot of good things in them. But, you know, that's. That. That's one of the main reasons why we eat food. Another big piece, though, is these things called macronutrients. And I'm keeping it really simple just because I think it's helpful. So if you're hearing me say this, you're like, I know what a macronutrient is, but, like, really just hang with me because I think it's important to get this. These key differ. So of them, we talk about carbohydrates, we talk about fat, and we talk about protein primarily. And protein is very, very different from carbohydrates and fat. The primary role of carbohydrates is energy, and a major role of fat is energy. Fat also helps build our cells, et cetera. But really, the reason why we Eat carbohydrates and fat is to fuel our bodies. And if you can think about your body like a house, you know, and I'm looking at you right now, and I know in the background there are lights that have to be run. There's, you know, whatever else is going on in the studio, if someone's at home, they've got a dishwasher, you know, washing, a clothes washing machine, et cetera. All of those have to be powered in the same way. We have to move our muscles, we have to beat our heart, we have to think. And all of that requires energy. And so for your house, you get it powered with maybe energy from the grid that you buy from your local energy company or from a generator if the power goes out, maybe solar panels, etc. Etc. Maybe natural gas comes in to run your stove. So in a similar way, we're eating carbohydrates and we're eating fat as two different sources. Maybe you think, you know, kind of electricity from the grid and a natural gas to burn inside of our body so we can move and do things. And I think lots of times people think because proteins in the same conversation as those, like, that's why you eat protein. That is not why you eat protein. Less than 10% of protein is used for, like, energy. The reason why you eat protein is to maintain your body. So if you think about your house, your house is also built of things, right? It's like built of wood and metal and nails and paneling and ceramic tiles, et cetera. And all of those are made of kind of smaller materials, you know, grains of sand, et cetera. Well, our bodies are all. A huge portion of them is made up of proteins. Over 50% of your bone mass, all. All your vital organs, your muscle, your skin, your hair, your nails, and less obvious things like hormones, your actual hormones are made up of proteins. The enzymes in your body are made up of proteins. All of these are made up of these building blocks called proteins. And in the same way that in our house, things don't last forever. You know, eventually, like, the ceramic tile wears out. Eventually the carpet has to be replaced. At some point, you need to repaint the walls. Well, that's how proteins function in our body. And right now inside my body, if I look down at, like, my skin, it's made up of these millions of proteins. And inside your body, whoever's listening right now, you look at your arm, there are proteins in your skin right now that are older relative to each other. And they're basically, they're not as good as they used to be, and they've become degraded. And so your body is saying, hey, let's break down this old skin protein and let's replace it with a new one. Similar to. You look around at your house and you're like, oh, my gosh, like, that trim has, like been broken and we've been needing to fix it. We, you know, we finally need to fix it. Or maybe you want to remodel your bathroom, right? And so maybe you look at your body and you're like, I want to, like, remodel. You know, I want to, want to change my body composition. I want to build more muscle or do something different with it. Well, for that you need to, you're going to need protein. And so this, this little skin protein right now is breaking apart. And what's happening is inside of that protein, there are all these little things called amino acids. Amino acids are the little pieces that make up the protein. And some of them are old and like, really can't be reused. And so you're like literally going to pee them out. Some of the amino acids, though, can be kept and they can be reused to make a new skin protein or move throughout the body to make a new enzyme protein or hormone protein. In the same way that in your house, maybe you're thinking about redoing your bathroom and you're like, you know what? Actually there's this really cool old claw foot tub and I want to keep that, right? But the tile is just terrible. We got to get rid of it, you know, so in a similar way, you keep some of the pieces and you get rid of some of them. And so what you immediately notice is if you rip up all the tile in your bathroom, you need more tile. Like, you know, like, otherwise you're going to have a bare floor. Similarly, when that skin protein breaks down, you're. You're deficient now. Like, you need new amino acids to help rebuild that protein. That is why we eat protein in our diet. When we eat a chicken breast or eat quinoa or eat any of these things, we digest them. The amino acids go into our blood and they literally rebuild our vital organs, our bones, our hormones, our enzymes, our hair, our nails, our muscle. So like that, that is why this whole craze, you know, the craze around protein exists. It's really that important.
- [09:01]
Louisa Nicola
That is mind blowing to me because we really only hear about protein for muscle, muscle protein synthesis, right? We think we have to eat whether it's, you know, whether you subscribe to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body mass or whatever it is. But we have to eat protein to rebuild our muscles, and so we don't lose muscle. Right. I've never really heard about it in the way that you've just described it, meaning that we need it to regenerate even the smallest parts of our body. And so it actually reminds me this morning, right here on my shoulder, I have an injury and I burnt myself this morning with the curling iron. And it's literally bubbly. So you saying now the skin, my skin that's breaking down in here could be regenerated using with if I eat more protein?
- [09:50]
Angelo Keeley
Yes. It's maybe even slightly more nuanced. Whether you burned yourself or not, the proteins in your skin are going to need to be rebuilt. They're going to be not as effective as they used to be. They're going to be need to be rebuilt. Then if you injure yourself, and this is actually a great introduction to why you might want more protein in your diet, why you might want more essential amino acids specifically. Basically that portion of your body is undergoing this very specific stress, and it needs even more protein and more amino acids than it would typically need in order to rebuild it. Right? It's not just the normal skin, it's this damaged skin, skin. And so you need even more protein and even more amino acids when you are under stress. On top of that, that stress affects the use of the protein and amino acids throughout your body. And the more stress you're under, the more protein and amino acids you particularly need in general, not just for that one section of your body, but even for other sections of your body.
- [10:50]
Louisa Nicola
So pretty much, is it just like a, you lose it, you replace it, you lose it, you replace it. Is it that simple?
- [10:56]
Angelo Keeley
This actually maybe ties back into, like, why is muscle always the focus when we talk about protein synthesis? The way that human biology works, it's really cool, is that when you eat more food and more calories than you need in a day, more than you move, then your body will store a lot of those excess calories as fat. And we don't like this as modern humans, right, who are like consuming too much food. And we're trying to lose it, right? We're trying to. We're not, we don't want to be overweight, but it's, it's, it's a mechanism through which if you're in a situation where you have access to a bunch of food, your tribe, your family just killed an animal and you can eat it all, but Then maybe you don't have food for a couple days. Like you can kind of live off of it for a longer period of time. So that's how we store energy, like we actually store energy in our body via this fat. Well, if we need amino acids to help rebuild all these proteins in our body, our heart, like our heart tissue is going to need to be rebuilt tomorrow. And just for example, the like liver proteins, proteins associated with, with the liver, there's a 30% turnover every day. 30% of them have to be rebuilt every day. Whereas with muscle it's like 1 to 2%, it's much lower. So there's this huge need to rebuild proteins associated with the liver to rebuild heart tissue, skin, all of these things. Well, what happens if you go without food? What happens if you go without any protein for a while? Where does your body get it from? It gets it from your muscle. Your muscle is the reservoir of amino acids to help rebuild the proteins in your body. Not in exactly the same way, but in a parallel way to the way that fat mass is a, is like a reservoir of energy for your body. And so when you, if you do not eat enough protein and you don't, you don't kind of re stimulate this process of replacing the old proteins with new ones, which is what happens when you eat essential amino acids, then what's going to happen is you're actually going to start to eat away at your muscle. And that is why, that's what happens if you undergo surgery and you're under bed rest for a long time, or as we age, we can get more to that, the stress physiology of aging. You start losing muscle. Or if you go into some kind of aggressive weight loss program where you're cutting calories but you're not thinking really crucially about your protein and your essential amino acid intake, what's going to happen is you start losing muscle, a lot of muscle. So it's not a simple in and out. It is the case that if you eat a sufficient amount, then you can maintain it. You can maintain the proteins, maintain the muscle. But if you don't, you'll start to break down muscle to support all the other functions of your body.
- [13:25]
Louisa Nicola
I think we've got a problem here because what I find is that we've got many people, whether it's men or women, who are a, they either don't know how much to consume to not only not lose muscle, but also regenerate. Because what you're telling me here is I feel like, whoa, we are completely, we've gotten it wrong. We are not eating. We are not eating enough protein. That's what I've just garnered from what you've just said.
- [13:53]
Angelo Keeley
I think the nuances, well, it depends on who's talking and how much protein they're eating and what age they are, et cetera. Maybe that's, that's one, that's one point I might make is I think a lot of the nuance is left because someone on social media just wants to say something big and loud and get attention or some New York Times columnist wants to bust. All these people on social media, they think misrepresenting stuff and it's like there's more nuance to it. I can't say, you know, prescriptively we're not eating enough protein. What I can say is let's talk about how much protein is the right amount and then each person can evaluate for themselves what that is.
- [14:26]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
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- [17:18]
Louisa Nicola
Where do you think we're going wrong as a society when it comes to protein, muscle protein synthesis, consuming protein, consuming different types of protein, the difference between whey protein versus plant based protein and even aminos. Where do you think we're going wrong?
- [17:34]
Angelo Keeley
I think we're going to wrong in not understanding that not all protein is equal. Protein is not equal, depending on where you get it from. Going back to the analogy of like the house, if you look at a house made of bricks or rocks of some kind stone, someone who's kind of, you know, doesn't know that much about it might just say like, oh yeah, these two houses are, they're both made of brick. Well, one might be made of like a much more ro. Like the minerals that in the sand that goes into it is much more robust and stronger and the other one might be a very brittle kind of cheap form of it. And so that is the case with proteins. They are very, very different in how they affect our bodies. So acting like kidney beans and beef and whey protein and essential amino acids are the same is simply not true. And the older that we get, the more important that difference is.
- [18:27]
Louisa Nicola
Why don't we break down then all the, you know, the differences in protein. And I really want to have a strong emphasis as well on what you brought up, which is aminos. And I think it's a topic that not many people really know too much about. I know you mentioned that if we can imagine protein as a block and the things that make up the protein are amino acids. Can we just understand a bit more about what aminos are? And then we'll go into whey protein and pea protein and steak and liver.
- [18:54]
Angelo Keeley
The aminos that make up protein are divided into two main categories, the essential amino acids and the non essential amino acids. And this division is what you'll hear about when people talk about complete proteins or incomplete proteins. It'll also be a big part of the debates that you hear between plant based diets versus animal or omnivorous diets. Right. And the idea of this essential versus non essential, really there's two parts to it. And the one part that I think maybe more of your audience might have heard is that what essential means in a diet is that you have to eat it, meaning your body can't make it. So there are also essential fatty acids, certain types of fats you need to eat because it helps rebuild your cells in certain ways. There are essential amino acids that, that help rebuild the proteins in your body and you simply cannot make them. It's cool though. Your body can actually take the essential amino acids. It can take leucine, isoleucine, valine can take these and it can help re. And it can actually make new ones. It can make the non essential ones. The liver and the kidneys can actually create the other ones. But you have to get the essential.
- [20:06]
Louisa Nicola
Isn't leucine the primary amino acid for muscle protein synthesis?
- [20:11]
Angelo Keeley
It is Essential amino acids are not only the one that your body can't make, they're also the active component. And when I say active, think about like activated, meaning they actually do something. So the other amino acids, the non essential ones, can be used as building blocks to help rebuild skin, but the essential amino acids actually communicate to the body to break down and to rebuild proteins. And the more essential amino acids that you have in your blood in a high concentration, kind of measured at a peak moment, is directly correlated to how much more muscle protein synthesis and how much more whole body protein synthesis you'll get. In simple terms, when you eat a food or a supplement and you get a lot of the essential amino acids in your blood, that's how much new skin protein, how much liver proteins are going to be replaced, how much muscle protein is going to be built. It's really about how much of the essential amino acids are in a high concentration at once. The one nuance I'd say too is as you get older, you also need more leucine. And we can come Back to that later. But really that, that's like the key, key piece. And so when you're comparing all these different food sources, really the question is, okay, when I eat kidney beans, how digestible are they? How much of it is made up of essential amino acids and how quickly does it get into my blood? Similar when I'm comparing it to steak, when I'm comparing it to whey protein, et cetera. And so I think this is kind of, maybe a quick synopsis is just very simple and we can go like, we can go more into the plant based thing. But I would just say in general, plant proteins other than spirulina and soy, like in tofu, is actually a good composition of the soy. They really don't come anywhere close to competing with animal proteins. That said, there are vegetarian proteins like dairy, eggs, which are very close to, you know, meats or in some cases even better, and then there's meats. So that's kind of like a simple division in terms of the protein quality when you're really thinking about what's actually going to stimulate this protein synthesis. But then even within this, within the scope of like these animal proteins, it matters how you eat it even.
- [22:27]
Louisa Nicola
Well, doesn't it have a high, doesn't it have a high thermogenic effect as well? If you're consuming protein as opposed to.
- [22:33]
Angelo Keeley
A carbohydrate, a high thermogenic effect just means when you eat the protein, does it actually like make you burn more calories? And yes, because when you consume carbohydrates, think about it. If you're just like putting gasoline in the tank, it doesn't, doesn't make, you don't need to like burn more because of it. But when you consume protein and particularly essential amino acids, it tells your body, hey, we need to replace this old muscle tissue. Well, that takes energy. You actually have to burn energy to build the new proteins. And so it's, yeah, it's any kind of, depending on the source, could be anywhere from like 10 to 30%. When you're like essential amino acid supplements are going to be even more thermogenic than say whole food proteins.
- [23:13]
Louisa Nicola
So let me get this straight. We need to have essential amino acids in order to rebuild, whether it's muscle, skin, hair, everything. Essential amino acids are things that we need to consume because the body doesn't make them themselves. And to get the complete amino acid profile or even the essentials, we have to find them in animal based foods because they may not be found in certain proteins that are found in Plant based foods. Is that correct?
- [23:41]
Angelo Keeley
One nuance I would make is you can get them from, from plants.
- [23:45]
Louisa Nicola
You would just over consume those plants.
- [23:47]
Angelo Keeley
You would have to. Yeah, you'd have to consume a lot of them.
- [23:50]
Louisa Nicola
Yeah.
- [23:50]
Angelo Keeley
And so you're naturally going to consume a lot more calories and trying to consume them and you need to combine more of them to get an ideal profile. And I think all this especially in the context of aging. So if we're talking about say like a 15 year old or 20 year old, it's a little bit different. The nuance we're getting into becomes very, very important once we hit age 40. Really at age 30 it's important. But at age 40, especially because our body has such a harder time doing it. So yes, that, that's correct. Maybe a further kind of point to this then is then understanding where and how something like aminos fit in or protein powder. Like are those, like are those good? Are those better? Do you even need them if you're eating enough of the other protein? And here's, here's a really, I think important take home point for people. If you eat a five ounce steak, but you eat it on its own, meaning there's nothing else. Like literally just cook up a steak and you eat it on its own, it's been shown to have more of the essential amino acids get digested and go into the blood and hit this high level and thus stimulate more of this protein turnover in the body, replacing the old ones with new ones than if you ate over twice that amount, like a 12 ounce steak. But you ate that 12 ounce steak with broccoli and potatoes, et cetera, as part of a mixed meal. And the reason for that is because when you eat the steak on its own, it's more easily digested and the essential amino acids are more quickly absorbed into the blood and they can hit this peak concentration higher. So that's not a proposal or an argument to tell everyone to separate all their foods. Like I am a huge fan of that meal, broccoli, potatoes and steak. It just gives you the insight into like, huh? Okay, so the isolated proteins on their own are actually potentially more beneficial. And this becomes further proven if you take a whey protein powder and you compare it to that steak gram for gram, meaning like they have the equal doses. The whey protein is three times as potent as the steak. So protein powder, just like supplementing in your diet with some protein powder is not just a nice replacement, say for not trying to like eat one more chicken breast or eat one more piece of beef jerky or eat one more Greek yogurt, it literally is many times more potent and more powerful than the whole food, specifically for this protein turnover. Now, it's not going to have the iron that the steak has, it's not going to have the creatine that the steak has, it's not going to have other micronutrients. But in terms of you trying to hit these higher protein levels, it is more potent. And then when you compare that whey. Yeah, when you compare that whey protein to an essential amino acid supplement. And again, it matters what the essential amino acid supplement is and how it's formulated, that essential amino acid supplement is at least three times as powerful as the whey protein powder. So we're talking many, many times more potent and more powerful than whole food protein. And again, none of this is to endorse replacing your meals with supplements. I think it's more about eating healthy meals throughout the day and then when you're real and. But if it's hard, it's hard to hit these much higher protein targets. And as you're getting older, you need even higher, et cetera. Like, that's where you start to see like, wow, like one scoop of this essential amino acid supplement. Something like kion aminos is way more potent and way more powerful than gram for gram me trying to eat that chicken breast.
- [27:15]
Louisa Nicola
And let me tell you this, as a 65 kilo female, I toggle between 64.9 and 65.6. Right? So the way I try and work out my protein requirements is I do 1.8 grams. Oh, I do 1.8 times 65. Right. That's how. That's when I say that's my protein requirements now. I mean, I can't do the math right now, but let's just say it's around 120 grams. Sorry if that's a bit wrong. That's a lot for me to consume in food alone. So the way that I work it out is I will hit a, I've got a whey protein powder in the morning and I hit around 40 grams. That's what the. I put two scoops that ends up equaling 40 grams of whey protein in my smoothie in the morning and then I'll get another 40, 50 if I can from like directly from food itself. And I'm always having my aminos as well, my kion aminos throughout the day. And I never knew that there was a difference. I really didn't know that there was a difference between the 40 grams of whey protein or a steak that had 40 grams of protein in it. I thought that they were completely equal, but now you're telling me that if I have a, a steak and let's just say in, you know, 5 ounces, I'm not sure how much protein is in 5 ounces of steak, but you're.
- [28:32]
Angelo Keeley
Saying that about 30 grams of protein.
- [28:34]
Louisa Nicola
The bioavailability of that one, once it gets digested, you're saying that it won't really give me that 30 grams as opposed to 30 grams of pure whey protein isolate.
- [28:43]
Angelo Keeley
The 30 grams of whey protein will have a much bigger impact on your physiology in terms of replacing the old proteins because the essential amino acids in it are more available and it also has a slightly better profile of the amino acids. But basically, yes, it's just because we're thinking we need protein. What you really need are essential amino acids. That's really what you're trying to get, especially as you, as you get older.
- [29:09]
Louisa Nicola
And the best way to do that, obviously, whether it's through whey protein, whether it's through food or the best way, is evidently through getting it in its raw form, which is an amino supplement.
- [29:21]
Angelo Keeley
Yes. And the reason for that is because it is again. Well, so actually here's a, here's an interesting comparison too. Multiple studies have been done to try to track down like, hey, is there any amount of the non essential amino acids that, that contribute to this protein turnover? And there's not. They've done multiple studies and it's entirely the essential amino acids. So even in a really high quality protein like a whey protein powder, only 45% of it is essential amino acids. When you take an essential amino acid supplement, it's the amino acids are 100% the essential amino acids. So you're only getting the active components. So it's over twice the density. Right. So over twice the amount of the, of the essential amino acids per gram. On top of that, they don't really have to be digested, they're just immediately available to the blood and you can tweak the formula, especially when we're getting older, to have an even greater impact than the whey protein. So for sure, the essential amino acids, gram for gram, are going to be much more impactful. And here's maybe even more mind blowing is that as we get older. So this is like Luisa, like the difference between Luisa now and Luisa 20 years ago. Unfortunately you do not digest protein as well as you used to. And your sensitivity to the essential amino Acids in the protein has become reduced. And so what happens is as we age, we need even more of the essential amino acids and we particularly need more leucine. So this is coming back to your leucine question. When, when you add leucine and make it a higher proportion of the total amount of essential amino acids, as we age, it becomes much more impactful. So when you take a leucine enriched essential amino acid and compare it to whey protein for women in their 60s, it's not just three times the impact, it's six times the impact. Three grams of essential amino acids are equal to 20 grams of whey protein in studies.
- [31:20]
Louisa Nicola
Oh my goodness.
- [31:22]
Angelo Keeley
Way more potent and powerful. So I think, you know, it's like the, the older we get, the more powerful these essential amino acids in a raw free form supplement are going to be, particularly if they have extra leucine then versus like a protein powder. So it's. Yeah, these things are not equal. So you can tell, like I showed the plants versus the, versus the meat and the, and the animal products like, you know, dairy and eggs, way stronger. You eat the meat on its own, stronger, you take a protein powder, even stronger, you get all the way to, you know, an essential amino acid supplement way stronger. So you see this big spectrum where oftentimes people are just told like, oh, it's all the same, you just need to get higher protein. But actually could be much easier for people if they knew, like, wow, I could just add this essential amino acid supplement. I could maybe add a protein powder here and you could. It'd be much easier for people to hit those goals than trying to do it, you know, only through food alone and kind of stumbling through what are the best foods to get there.
- [32:20]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
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- [33:08]
Louisa Nicola
I put out those cinnamon donuts and.
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- [34:30]
Louisa Nicola
Five star hotel every night.
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- [34:56]
Louisa Nicola
Well, you mentioned earlier that leucine is the most important out of the amino acids. But I've also read that in order to stimulate alone just muscle protein synthesis, you need around 2 grams of leucine or above 2 grams of leucine per serving to activate that and that it makes me think you need a lot of protein in one meal then to actually get that. And that's a lot. That's a lot of steak.
- [35:21]
Angelo Keeley
Just going back to what I said earlier. Honestly, steak on its own is not very anabolic. It doesn't stimulate that much protein synthesis.
- [35:29]
Louisa Nicola
Like you've just upset me so much.
- [35:32]
Angelo Keeley
Well, but this is a big reason why I think oftentimes which is true, the emphasis for people trying to get healthy and you know, want to build muscle and lose fat is you should lift weights or you should do some kind of resistance training. Because when you train, you stimulate this protein turnover, you stimulate this muscle protein synthesis. And in that context, if you just trained and you eat some steak, the steak is just kind of the raw materials to help support the process. What we're talking about is nutrition on its own without any exercise being capable of building and maintaining muscle. And the kind of most mind blowing example of this is now it's almost 20 year old study. But there are multiple studies that NASA basically sponsored. And I believe this was with the University of Texas Medical Branch. That's where that was a major lab. And then another major lab now is University of Arkansas. These are basically surgical and medical campuses that are integrated with these really awesome nutrition study labs NASA sponsored to study because naturally when we go to outer space, when astronauts go to outer space, they just lose muscle because there's no resistance, right? And they wanted to know, is there any way through nutrition that we could help these astronauts maintain their muscle? So multiple studies were conducted. The first one was 28 days of bed rest. They took young adults who are much better at maintaining muscle than, you know, a 45 or a 50 year old person, and they put them at complete bed rest. And typically if you, you know, just, you're at bed rest, you lose a lot of muscle over that period. Even a young healthy person. But they were given a regular diet and they were given amino acids, essential amino acids in larger servings, three times a day. And after 28 days of complete bed rest, no movement, right. They lost zero muscle. And in most people you talk to a typical trainer, they're like, oh, that's impossible. You have to lift weights. Like no you don't. Like, you literally can stimulate protein turnover and protein synthesis to protect, to maintain muscle strictly through nutrition. If you get a very highly concentrated dose of essential amino acids. That would not work though with steak alone. Like steak is not anabolic, it doesn't do that. So I think that's like the bigger take home idea too is these, these essential amino acids are not just this, they're not only like a replacement to protein, they're not in the way that like you kind of have to, you have to use resistance training with the protein. They literally are something you can take on your day off of working out or you ideally would take every day if you're aging. And they literally will build and maintain your muscle without any additional exercise. Studies of women in their 60s have shown that over the course of like three months doing nothing extra in terms of exercise, were able to add 2.4 pounds of muscle on average, taking essential amino acids with no additional exercise.
- [38:24]
Louisa Nicola
You know, the reason why this is such a controversial field, as, you know, on, on social medias, because I look, to be completely honest, I had Chris Gardner on the podcast who mentioned that the most important aspect of muscle protein synthesis is actually exercise. And in some of the studies he's done, it's, you know, exercise outweighs nutrition. And then I speak to multiple people like yourself and other people who think that, no, we just need to hit the amino acid profile to stimulate muscle proteins and synthesis. So I can understand why it's so difficult for people to just stick to one lane. It's like, who do I subscribe to?
- [39:03]
Angelo Keeley
And just to clarify my point, I was not saying that it's through nutrition alone. What I was saying is that it would be an oversimplification to say that the only way that you can do it is through resistance training. Instead, what I would say is, if we are. If you're an aging adult, let's just say you're over 40, right? Resistance training is awesome, and I would highly encourage you to do it. And not only does it stimulate muscle protein synthesis, but it has all types of other really important adaptations for the muscle and overall health, et cetera. And there is a very unique benefit to supplementing with essential amino acids that is supplementary to that and has all these extra added benefits that for, you know, someone else to say that's not true is that's not true. Both are true at the same time. And so rather than having to be like an either or, what I would say is that, like, everyone being so obsessed with telling everyone, you know, just to get enough protein, but you don't exercise like that is, I would agree, like, that's kind of a faulty. That's faulty advice. Exercise is really important, and I highly recommend that everyone do it. And if you add something like essential amino acids, you're going to get all of these added benefits that are in addition to the exercise, and they are measurably important. And not from, like, my opinion, but from, I mean, the International Society of Sports Nutrition had a position paper that came out on this in 2023. There's like 137 studies quoted for that, for that position paper. This is not like just, you know, one more guy on the podcast kind of arguing about something. Like, I'm simply representing what the data says. That. That would be my response to that.
- [40:47]
Louisa Nicola
I really love the way this Conversation's going. And I, I want to ask you, what was the catalyst for you to really think, well, if what we need are essential amino acids, it's not actually like, let's get, let's get rid of protein right now. Let's get rid of, you know, is it 2 grams per kilogram of body weight? Let's get rid of that and just think, let's turn the conversation to. No, let's talk more about essential amino acids. What, what provoked you to actually build kion and build kion aminos.
- [41:16]
Angelo Keeley
So, I mean, I have my own personal journey of being raised in a family that was very health centric. My parents were actually had a natural health food store, natural health food restaurant as a kid, but definitely have the more like very hippie, crunchy side. I'm 41, I was raised in the 80s and we're like very hippie people in Austin, Texas.
- [41:37]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
And.
- [41:37]
Angelo Keeley
But we talked a lot about protein nutrition as a kid. We were actually pescatarians and we talked about plant protein combining. Like as a little kid, I remember being four years old and being told, you have to eat the beans and the rice together or the lentils or the quinoa, because. And my parents explained to me why that was so important. Also we took amino acids as a supplement. So I was, I was exposed to it a very, very long time ago. And I think that, you know, my life went in a lot of different directions, but I basically landed up in this space, you know, later in life where I wanted to focus my work and my life and my career on something I just cared about and that I thought was meaningful and important to people. And what essential amino acids can do is really, really potent. It's been shown to be so beneficial in so many different situations. You know, we haven't even gotten to like the fat loss while maintaining muscle context yet. But you think about more clinical context of aging populations. Like the difference of someone being 80 and being able to like ride a bicycle and hang out with their family and do awesome, you know, active stuff versus being, you know, confined to a wheelchair like that. That's a, that's a good, meaningful, you know, work to participate in. And there is just so much data behind essential amino acids. It's a very open field. It's. This is not some secret proprietary thing or some like cut, you know, novel, cutting edge ingredient thing, like a marketing hype. This is like really, really legit science with hundreds of studies and just bringing that to people and helping to educate more people about this and just really help them in their life. Like that's good, meaningful work. So I think it's really, it's that simple. It's like, you know, spending my life doing something that I have roots in and that actually helps people.
- [43:26]
Louisa Nicola
Okay, so I'm going to now jump into the hearts and minds of the community. Right? Let's say I'm a 45 year old female. I want to maintain my muscle mass, if not also build. I'm working out strength training three times a week. I'm completely confused about what to eat, how do I go about the whole protein? Like, forget the macronutrients, the other ones that you described, let's just talk how much protein do I need? Where in a ratio form should I.
- [43:55]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
Be getting it from?
- [43:56]
Louisa Nicola
And we'll include aminos in that as well.
- [43:58]
Angelo Keeley
The RDA or the dri, which is basically kind of government recommendations, is about, sorry, I'm going to do everything in grams and pounds of body weight. I apologize, I'm not as versed in switching back between kgs. It's about 0.4 grams of protein per pound of body weight. So everyone can do the 2.2 math in your head right now for kgs that is deficient. Those are very old studies. They're not like they, they literally don't make sense. I think that for a younger adult, it's probably somewhere around 0.7, like 0, 6.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight. So if you weighed, and I'm gonna do simple math, I don't assume people weigh these amounts, but you weigh a hundred pounds, that'd be like 70 grams of protein. That said, when we undergo any kind of stress, you need more than that or if you want to build muscle. So as we age you really, you need to keep increasing more and more. And so I think it kind of depends on what state of your health journey you're in. Are you already pretty fit, are you overweight and you're trying to lose fat and you're cutting calories, et cetera. But let's just say that you're already pretty fit and you're really just trying to build and maintain that muscle. I think by the time you're 45, it is wise to aim for about a gram of protein per pound of body weight. So if you weigh a hundred pounds, it'd be a hundred grams of protein per day. If you weigh 150 pounds, be about 150 grams of protein per day. And, and I, I say that too because it's just kind of simple. Guidance and where you get that from. I think really great solutions are things like yogurts. Like a, a Greek yogurt is awesome. High density, like tons of protein and it's a very high quality. Dairy is a very high quality protein. Things like eggs are awesome. Animal proteins, really any kind of, you know, lean chicken, beef, fish, et cetera. And then I think if you want to be more on the plant protein side, obviously if you're doing vegetarian, like eggs and dairy will be a big part of it. On the plant side, I think there aren't really many other good options other than like soy and spirulina, buckwheat, quinoa, they're relatively, they're okay, but it's really focused on that. And then I think the idea would be it's hitting those higher daily protein requirements, but if you can, breaking it up into multiple meals throughout the day. And this is less relevant again for when we're younger, but as we get older. Basically when you, when you eat protein and you're getting these essential amino acids, it, it kickstarts this process of this protein turnover thing we were talking about. It lasts for a few hours, lasts for about three hours. It kind of depends on the protein source, but let's just say it's about three hours. And then after that and you haven't kind of increased the amount of protein and thus amino acids in your blood and you don't have this whole process running, your body starts looking for more amino acids and it potentially then needs to start getting them from your muscle.
- [46:57]
Louisa Nicola
Yeah.
- [46:58]
Angelo Keeley
Now it's not a big deal. We're young, but as we get older it's more important. So eating the protein every few hours ensures that you're really maintaining that muscle.
- [47:06]
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- [50:08]
Louisa Nicola
There's a headline now. So GLP1s are completely spotlighted right now in society. Ozempic and Tirzepatide and what we're seeing a lot of is the misuse of them, where a lot of people are taking them, both men and women, and they're not meeting the protein requirements per day and they're arguably losing a lot of weight, rightfully so, because they're eating and consuming A lot less. But do we think that this is another big issue that we need to overcome in society as well?
- [50:39]
Angelo Keeley
I think definitely. So if you're 100 pounds overweight and you can lose that hundred pounds, even if you lose a lot of muscle with it, it's probably going to be a net positive for your health. So I'm not going to say that's not the case. I think the risk always is when we. There's two main risks when we lose a lot of weight through caloric restriction and that's really, I mean, we can talk about however we want, but GLP1 agonists, basically, they primarily help with appetite, they suppress our appetite. We eat a lot less food, there's a lot less calories coming in, so you burn a lot of fat, but also there's a lot less protein coming in and you have these much higher needs for protein. Also during weight loss, that's another stress case. So you, you lose a lot of muscle. So in a short term weight loss phase, you know, you lose 10 pounds of weight, 4 pounds of it could be muscle. In a longer phase on like these drugs, it's probably 25, 30% is muscle. And now the risk is that you lose that weight and then if you want to try to come off the drug or you didn't even do it through a drug, you just did it through, you know, a trainer and willpower and other things like that. And then you go back to the negative behaviors. If you just lost, you know, all that muscle with the fat, but then you go back to behaviors where you eat more than you need and you start eating junk food again or doing whatever it was that you did, you are likely going to add that weight back on, whether it's £10 or £50 or £100. And I promise you, it's going to be more fat than it is muscle. So when you do this yo, yo, where you lose the weight and then you put the weight back on and you lose the weight and you put the weight back on, the chances of you progressively losing more and more and more muscle over time is going to be greater. And so why does that matter? Why is it so dangerous to be losing muscle? Well, muscle is what keeps you active, allows you to do things, you know, lift yourself. And as you age, it's going to become more and more and more important in order just to stay active, to keep, not just like running or going to yoga class, but like walking. It's what helps prevent falls when you get older. If you fall, it's you know, high risk of death or other types of serious conditions after a fall. But Also, muscle absorbs 80% of the carbs and sugar that we eat in our diet. Muscle basically significantly helps regulate our metabolism. Muscle, like you said earlier, you know, when you eat protein, it has this diet induced thermogenesis. It increases the calories you burn. The more muscle you have in your body, the more calories you burn. And so it allows you to have the kind of a higher resting metabolic rate without doing anything. The more muscle you have, the more calories you're going to burn. And so if you lose your muscle, it's going to just incline you to get fatter and fatter and fatter if you maintain the same diet, because you don't have as much muscle to help, you know, that burns all those calories by just simply having the muscle. So I think it's quite dangerous to be, I think, too obsessed with the weight loss and not be thinking about, really it's about body composition, how do I lose fat and maintain muscle? And here's the maybe like the big headline, it is possible. What I would say is if you're gonna take a GLP1 agonist or you're gonna do some type of aggressive calorie restriction with a trainer, I highly recommend that you weight train. Cause if you weight train, it's gonna help build and maintain that muscle. But the other thing you can do is you can take essential amino acids. And recent studies actually sponsored by the Department of Defense, showed that a 30% caloric restriction, which is like if you, let's just say if you are 2,000 calories a day, is kind of your maintenance diet. If you cut 600 calories from your diet, which would be a little over a pound a week of weight loss probably, and you do that for 10 weeks, you're going to lose 10 pounds. Right? That small of caloric restriction requires a 300% increase in essential amino acids per sitting, three times the amount. So like we're talking about all these protein levels before you need to eat three times the amount of that protein or three times the amount of those essential amino acids in a sitting if you want to have no muscle loss, if you want to have a net protein balance. So if you're going to cut calories that aggressively, it's not only like removing, you know, the calories, you need to eat like two, three times as much protein in these servings or ideally be using something like a protein powder, et cetera. And what I've seen again and Again is when people simply do calorie restriction with a GLP1 or on their own, but they take essential amino acids in slightly larger doses, maybe two or three servings, two or three times a day. They literally can lose no muscle and only lose fat. And I promise you, the difference between losing 10 pounds of fat fat versus losing 6 pounds of fat and 4 pounds of muscle is very different. Your body looks and feels very different. Your metabolism is very different. And if you scale that up to, you know, 20 pounds, 20 pounds of fat. Right. Versus like 12 pounds of fat and 8 pounds of muscle, it's very different. You are like a totally different person. Way lower body fat percentage, much more athletic, much better, you know, metabolic health, et cetera. So I think the indications for thinking about essential amino acids specifically during weight loss is one of the most, like, obvious yeses.
- [56:01]
Louisa Nicola
Okay, so you've convinced me, obviously. So how many grams of these amino acids should I be taking a day? So the one that I currently have, the kion one, there's a little scoop in there. I just. It says one scoop for the serving size. I just have one. Mix it with water. How many times a day should I be having that?
- [56:19]
Angelo Keeley
Again, every person's different and it's going to depend on, you know what, what you know, what you're up to and what your goals are. But just like fitness, actually being consistent with something is way more important than all, like, the perfect ways to do it. It's like going to the gym three times a week is much more important than like not going to the gym, but because you didn't do the perfect amount of whatever exercises. So what I would say is starting with one scoop a day and being consistent with it. No matter what, you're going to take that scoop a day and finding that time of day when you're going to do it. For me, it's the first thing in the morning. It's a very easy. I know first thing in the morning. I'm helping to contribute to, you know, my, my kind of higher protein, essential amino acid targets for the day. It's giving me. We haven't even gotten to the mental benefits, but there's really significant mental clarity, focus, mood benefits to the amino acids. I'm helping to build and maintain my muscle. Just first thing in the morning, do.
- [57:08]
Louisa Nicola
It and it doesn't break a fast.
- [57:10]
Angelo Keeley
It doesn't break a fast. Yeah, there's really no digestive impact. And honestly, it helps promote more of kind of the mental clarity a lot of people get from fasting. And it's been shown that essential amino acids. This isn't animal studies but it's honestly all similar to all the other types of claims people make about fasting. There's more mitochondrial biogenesis promoted from essential amino acids which is the creation of all this mitochondria like this cellular health than from fasting or from caloric restriction alone. So it's like, it's like super fasting. So I think yeah, I mean first thing, first thing in the morning is great and then after that if you have more ambitious goals and you want even more better results, you can take it more often. Honestly, the, like the ISSN paper I talked about earlier over comparing many, many studies basically showed that you could take a hundred grams per day. That'd be the equivalent of 20 scoops of KION aminos. Like that is a lot of. I like own the company. I don't take it, I don't take it that much. So from a safety level you can take a lot of. But what I would say is like, you know, if you, if you got injured and having to take, trying to, having to take a break from weight training, I would take two or three scoops two or three times a day. If you're in a really aggressive cut phase and you're trying to lose fat but want to maintain your muscle similarly I might take two or three scoops two or three times a day. If you're just trying to maintain. I think one scoop a day is great if you can afford it in your budget up to three scoops. So 15 grams in one serving, you get maximum benefit and it is linear. Literally three scoops is three times better than one scoop. You don't necessarily have to do that, but it is three times better. And after that it starts to plateau. It's kind of similar with protein. Like there's only so much protein you can eat in a general serving to where the protein is used really for the protein synthesis in this more ideal way. So it's similar with, with the essential amino acids. It's like really I think 15 grams per serving is kind of the, the max benefit. Except, sorry, I don't mean to offer so many like you know, except in a weight loss phase where you're really trying to cut calories, you could be taking even more. You could probably take up to four or five because of the stress. Yeah but because your body, again I said you have this super increased need for the essential amino acids because basically your body's starving. And whenever you put the, when you put protein in There, you put essential amino acids in there. It's not prioritizing using them for the protein synthesis. And it needs an even bigger signal of like, no, I really, really want you to use like you're telling your body, I really, really want you to use these essential amino acids to build and maintain muscle. And so I think the max is 25 grams in a, in a weight loss situation. But that's a lot.
- [59:58]
Louisa Nicola
Yeah, that sounds like a lot. Okay, you don't.
- [60:00]
Angelo Keeley
And again, what I would say is like, you don't need to do that. That I think it's start with once a day and then if you're in certain periods where you really want to build more muscle or you really want to lose fat or you're, you know, you got injured in some way, like that's when you start thinking about, hey, can I add it more often? I think in your case though, Luisa, you said you take it twice a day. Yes, that's also the same thing.
- [60:20]
Louisa Nicola
I take it first thing in the morning as well. Yeah, yeah, first thing in the morning. I go to the gym in the morning and I've, I don't mean to fast, I just can't eat first. I've got no appetite. Maybe I'll have half a banana. So that's when I take it and then I take it around 2 or.
- [60:34]
Angelo Keeley
3Pm that makes a lot of sense. That's also, I think, very common for people because it's. While it doesn't stifle hunger later on it has kind of a satiating effect. And the essential amino acids are the precursors to our neurotransmitters.
- [60:49]
Louisa Nicola
Oh, that's an even better thing to a better reason to have them.
- [60:53]
Angelo Keeley
Yeah. So basically, and particularly if you take the right kind of formula and Kion supports this where there's like lower amounts of the tryptophan, higher amounts of phenylalanine and leucine, et cetera, you're basically promoting more of the dopamine production in the brain and through that you're basically feeling more alert, focused, et cetera. So it's a great kind of mid afternoon thing. Instead of trying to have maybe another dose of caffeine via coffee and then messing up your sleep patterns because it's really has no, you know, negative side effects in that way.
- [61:23]
Louisa Nicola
Well, Angela, you've painted such a great overview of what we can all be doing when it comes to our protein requirements. I always say that the best course of action is education. And not only did you educate us on what protein really is. I don't know how many times I need to be told it, but I haven't heard it in the way that you did today. Especially now for me, going into my days, I know that I'm going to be focusing more so on the amino acid profile first and foremost. And really looking at how can I meet that first. And then moving into Whole Foods, obviously and the. And then whey protein as well. I didn't realize that we needed so much. I think I've been undervaluing the effects of protein, which you've clearly outlined. All of the effects of it, from skin health to aging, and especially the stress component, which I think is. Is monumental for me, somebody who travels, I'm on a plane between New York and LA every two or three weeks. So it's, it's definitely essential for me. So if people want to start using these essential aminos, where would you think? Like, where would they start? So we, we're going to link Kion below. Is there just. So is there just how many different types of amino have you just got? The one that people contain?
- [62:37]
Angelo Keeley
Yeah. And so I think maybe that's. That's a good question too. It's like, does it matter which brand you get and how and are these things similar or different? Here's. We only have one. Keon only has one. Because that's, I think for what we talked about today, particularly around this protein synthesis, like the research is coming out of a lot of different labs and it's, it's all been kind of consolidated in a way in which it's pretty clear what the right type of formula is. And so what I would look for is, number one, non proprietary. If a brand promotes something as proprietary and they don't tell you the exact amount of each amino acid that is in the formula, you definitely should not take it. And the reason for that is because the proportions of these amino acids, it is very important. It can have major impacts on your brain chemistry. For the neurotransmitter stuff we just briefly spoke about and this whole idea of like overcoming the anabolic resistance, overcoming our body's desire to like not want to build muscle as we age, that only works if you have these increased amounts of leucine. And so and similarly you need certain amounts of isoleucine and valine. So you definitely want a brand that tells you exactly how much of each amino acid is in there. Next you want all nine of the amino acids. Some brands may try to only have eight or only the branch chain, the bcaa Formulas like those, they will not work likely and could even be negative for you. So I would just advise people not. Not to do that. And then the proportions really matter. So I can just tell you like key on file, you know, follows what the research says, really the leaders of the field and we publish exactly what it says. It's a transparent formula. And then after that you don't need anything else. If people are trying to tell you, like with their marketing mumbo jumbo, oh, you got to have this blah, blah, blah, acid or it only works if you put taurine in there too. It's like, that's not true. The research really shows that the non essential amino acids in this type of formula are very impactful for all the reasons that we described. And then, yeah, you don't need any other like weird junk in there. You know, if you're taking a flavored drink, ideally it's clean and it's very simple, easy label to understand. So at Kion, we do all that because. Yeah, again, I think just kind of going back to like, why you asked me, why am I doing this? You know, how do I get into this whole space and what do I care about? And it's really just trying to take, take all this awesome work from these amazing researchers and academic institutions and turn that into a clear, easy to understand product for people to take at home that doesn't have to follow some other type of weird marketing or sales directives or impulses, et cetera. Just like make the good, clear premium thing that really works and get it to people. So, yeah, I could say we follow all those guidelines that I just described.
- [65:25]
Louisa Nicola
Well, that makes me feel so much better because you're above all of that. The, the flavor is amazing. It's the watermelon flavor for me.
- [65:33]
Angelo Keeley
I love to hear that. Yeah, flavors is something I think being in the business, I was kind of most surprised of that flavors could be so different for people. Like some people swear by the watermelon and someone's like, no, I love the mango. No, I love the berry. Like, it's. I think every person is just a different. Oh, I'd say is the watermelon, I think is the sweetest. So I think people like.
- [65:52]
Louisa Nicola
That's why I like it so much.
- [65:53]
Angelo Keeley
Yeah, I think people. Yeah. And so really. And like lime is the least sweet and kind of the most tart. And so I think people kind of find their way through that spectrum.
- [66:00]
Louisa Nicola
Well, Angelo, thank you so much for today. We'll link everything below and thank you for being part of the neuroexperience Podcast.
- [66:06]
Angelo Keeley
Thank you Louisa for having me.
- [66:08]
Sponsor/Ad Voice (possibly Louisa Nicola or a guest)
Hey team, real quick. If you want to get some of the kion aminos, let me tell you, they're not your average supplement. These are essential amino acids in their purest form. I use them every day to support muscle recovery, boost energy and keep my brain sharp. And what I love most is how clean they are. So if you want to get your hands on some of these, you can go to getkeown.com neuro for 20% off.
- [66:34]
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