Dr. Gabrielle Lyon: Muscle-centric medicine

people come to me because i'm the last stop i'll find the answer i won't settle welcome to this week's escape intermitts podcast and today we interview a medical doctor with a revolutionary approach to health wellness and longevity called muscle centric medicine in this episode we break the stereotype surrounding building muscle good and bad proteins animals over plants and how to deal with obesity as a nation so for a lesson in what we can all do to improve the long-term health of ourselves and our community then please check out this week's episode with dr gabrielle lyon so gabrielle thanks for inviting me into your beautiful apartment here for those of you who can't see or listening we've sort of got the beach and the ocean behind us and it's kind of a pretty nice sunny clear day and we're outside on the on the balcony so yeah thanks so much for coming down yeah you're welcome so what what's the obsession about muscle yeah that's a it's a long obsession you know i think at the heart of every obsession is you know depending on the kind of person you are you want to see a change for people so the beginning of muscle started with my own body i was so interested in the capacity to change body composition and then as you know right we were kind of chatting before i did my training my undergraduate training in vitamin mineral metabolism and protein with dr donald layman and he was really big into muscle and that really changed the trajectory of what i thought health was that's really when it started and and you the the gentleman that because i've when i was researching i tried to find out a little bit about him so he's he's like a pretty he's a bit of a guru for people who knows is that right so dr donald layman is one of the world leading protein experts he's recognized by many academic professionals so it's really interesting there's the academic group which those that those are the thinkers those are the ones that create the questions and the good science and he's one of them he's very well published very well respected and they they live in what's called kind of an ivory tower where they do their experiments they learn and then they do their best to provide information for practitioners like myself and other people to be able to move the needle right yeah so when you studied that i guess when you when you think of muscle and i guess protein you sort of think of the you know the fit the bodybuilding but but you um you know you didn't start there did you i did start oh you did did you start there i was very interested in fitness figure bodybuilding yes i was very interested personally right okay um but then what happens is of course as we all mature it becomes less about us and more about other people and i ended up doing my fellowship so i went to medical school did a few residencies and then did a fellowship and the fellowship was in obesity medicine and geriatrics right and i did that at washu and that is really where the concept of muscle-centric medicine which is the kind of medicine that i practice was born and i saw one end of the spectrum was this aging right so geriatrics aging end of life and then the obesity group which was largely midlife and the one thing that i really noticed when i thought about root cause approach was the fact that their body compositions were off on both ends of the spectrum and when we would image individuals brains the wider the waistline the lower the brain volume that's wild it was all about body composition and so muscle i realized was not just this thing for locomotion which of course it is arguably it is and everyone wants to look good in a bikini but it was so much more than that it's this endocrine organ and it's so underappreciated and that's what was so fascinating is that while being fit and looking good are so you know important at least of being fit part looking good also important i suppose but it was the metabolic aspects of muscle that were really valuable and when you think about truly being able to have any kind of control about the way you age it's muscle right so i've heard you on some other interviews talking about the the brain link and as you as you brought it up like so what what does that actually mean you say the brain density is less are you saying that you know in a layman's terms uh if if you're overweight that you you're probably not your brain is not kind of working in the same way as people that are fit and healthy is that right so yes and i will say that that alzheimer's disease is type 3 diabetes of the brain just to put it really simply that these metabolic issues this metabolic dysregulation that happens with our body just as much happened with our brain so there are insulin receptors in the brain the brain is exquisitely sensitive to inflammation and and you know just destruction of that matter and by optimizing metabolism through muscle you have the capacity to protect your brain right so it's interesting we often think or a lot of geriatricians feel that alzheimer's is you know people you're going to get it you're going to get old enough you're going to get it and arguably that's not always true so when you think about optimizing muscle mass mid-life it is about optimizing brain function so when i mention that comment that the wider the waistline the lower the brain volume when you have lower brain volume you have cognitive impairment impaired memory poor decision making poor executive function so yeah the capacity to deal with numbers short-term memory there's these are all these all become issues so what what age would that sort of decline with your your bro i suppose if you're if you're a business person you know like is this something that can happen fairly you know like 40s 50s or something like that right and you know you'll i mean so it's interesting because when you think about ways to protect your brain so there is that genetic component so there's genetic components to alzheimer's and cognitive impairment but there's also lifestyle components and people will tell you that if you stay fit and you stay active and i'm sure we'll talk about skeletal muscle and contracting releasing myokines which then go you know some of these proteins go to the brain to help with protection and anti-inflammatory effects but with memory you can definitely see changes you know in your 40s wow so much younger and people will chalk it up to say what's just stress but it's not the brain is also an organ and is that something like i've not i hadn't heard of it before maybe i'm i'm not well read on that sort of thing but it seems like it it is that solid research and is that commonly known a lot of people or is this sort of people are still trying to figure out so i think it's interesting when we think about obesity we know it affects one in three people and people talk about diabetes hypertension cardiovascular disease i would say most people don't relate body composition to cognitive function but they will so it's just that the research exists but it always takes a lot longer from research and and individuals doing those studies to then get out to the public right when you say much like how much and how do you know how much you need what a great question nobody has that answer right and that just shows you the floor the that just shows you the flawed concepts so everybody has been focusing on obesity you know professionals it's you know the failure of the obesity paradigm you know when you keep looking at something and you know the chances are you're going to keep getting more of that we have a failure of the obesity paradigm so individuals focus on adipose tissue that's not the right tissue we know what percent body fat is too much we know these things we don't know what i don't know what percent muscle mass you should have for optimal health nobody does so we've spent all our time focusing on pathology as opposed to what is possibly going to actually help what if i could tell my husband his optimal muscle mass that would be much more effective and efficient at finding his pathway to optimal health but nobody can tell you that the studies haven't been done right the data hasn't been collected and do you think do you think that's is that just because it's very expensive to do that or very very difficult to have the tools to be able to figure it out it's a good question i think that two things i think that looking at body fat where that becomes a problem is much easier so if we know that an individual is greater than 30 body fat we know that there's a problem however i don't know if we're ever going to know what percent muscle mass an individual should have i i hope that we will but it's much more challenging to look at the positive aspects right because we know that one individual depending on the person it has gotten a percent body fat of 30 percent or more we might see changes in inflammatory markers like crp or esr you know we may see that but with muscle mass how would we determine that you know it's just it's just a challenge so how when you're working with clients like what what do you say you know how do you sort of explain to them then if you prescribe look you need to build some more always that's always the recommendation so do you just say look you know whatever you whatever you're doing is is good and just build as much of it as you can or what do you i mean obviously doing a really good assessment in the beginning because muscle is an endocrine organ it's actually the largest organ in the body which is an interesting concept because people think of skin these other things but muscle in and of itself is an organ it is our amino acid reserve you know for branched chain amino acids it's our it improves our survivability just at baseline so when working with patients it's really about seeing where they're at and for sure looking at the percent muscle mass they have their body composition and then really tracking well so everyone has a different starting point it's all about improvement right and and in terms of the sort of training you recommend because you're obviously working with a huge sort of variation of clients you know very old to probably a lot younger not so old in my practice anymore right so i don't actually do much geriatrics anymore okay it depends sometimes yes but very very few right okay so if if you were working with that sort of spread of clients as an example um what what sort of training are you recommending that they do then is is it again is it sort of dependent on the trainer that they're working with say like you need to build muscle so again go and get a good trainer and and let them figure it out or is there certain things that that yeah can be recommended in general that's a really good question and you being in the fitness industry would probably say it depends right it really depends on the individual goal that being said making sure that you're working different energy systems are very important so yes hypertrophy training is valuable for someone like me because i know that that is very important to maintain and build as much muscle mass as an individual can throughout their age there's also the mitochondria type training so doing you know more endurance training it doesn't have to be extreme but adding in some kind of cardio component is also very valuable right so hit training functional training heavier strength training people should be dynamic and diverse right okay so but in general you're it's it's it's like you know right if you're going to put together a training program if you're going to try and find a training plan and then generally you you want to be doing something that's there to specifically build muscle as opposed absolutely and then a high-intensity interval training for insulin sensitivity i mean that really moves the needle at least what i've seen for body composition and inflammatory markers so high-intensity interval training we know improves insulin sensitivity right and if you care about your brain and you care about your other tissues then you care about being insulin sensitive so because i'm not a doctor and i and maybe people who are listening don't understand that so so what's what's insulin sensitivity and what's the relevance of that so when you think of well let's talk about the pathology so insulin resistance which is what we heard what we hear all the time is issues with you know subsequent development of type 2 diabetes so you become very resistant to insulin your body has to produce a lot of insulin you have difficulty getting glucose out of the bloodstream and we know glucose is cytotoxic cytotoxic so excess glucose causes issues in all kinds of ways to the body when you are insulin sensitive you have increasing glucose you produce some insulin or you rather you release some insulin and then you can move glucose out of the cell or out of the bloodstream okay and is it right am i correct in this that that the best way to remove glucose from the system is through muscle it is right and so um training is an excellent way to you know uh increase glucose disposal but skeletal muscle is responsible for roughly 80 of glucose disposal really so exercise if you are an individual who likes eating higher carbohydrates exercise would be very valuable which we know that you don't but exercise is very valuable in that way so on the staying on that point then just so i can sort of figure it out myself so what what in most cases i guess a lot of us you know i i like carbs ever and again every now and again i guess a lot of people probably eat a lot and too many carbs yeah so but one of the ways like carbs are not great for you to have too many too many excess is the problem right the carbs in and of itself are not it's not a problem right okay and um yeah but if you eat too many that's not great for you so your body needs to get rid of dispose of it yeah and and if you don't have a lot of or great muscle then are you gonna then struggle to get rid of that excess glucose so excess glucose right so your body has to get rid of it right muscle is going to be the key really in terms of the best possible strategy exercising muscle is the best possible strategy to remove glucose right and if you don't have how what would happen then if you've if you've not got much muscle so you have issues with um glucose regulation right so we know that there's issues with elevated blood glucose diabetes all the things that go along with obesity right these are all things that are actually related to muscle okay but people talk a lot about fat tissue as if fat's the driver that's not the driver it's unhealthy muscle or not enough muscle right that's the problem and it it all begins in the muscle first right which is fascinating which is the opposite so you know when we think about obesity and we think about carbohydrates there are two different groups so you know you were talking about too much carbohydrates is not good i agree there are two groups when it comes to obesity there is the calories in calories out group and then there is the carbohydrate insulin model group calories in calories out are you can have as many carbohydrates as you want as long as it's calorie controlled roughly right because it is about calories and calories out and then the carbohydrate insulin model is that any amount you know too much carbohydrates even if calories are controlled is a problem it's probably somewhere in the middle right so when you think about you know excess calories that's the problem and excess calories in the form no one can argue that excess glucose and excess insulin is not a problem it's a problem so how do you kind of reconcile the calories in calories out model which is important and then the carbohydrate insulin model which is also important where the middle ground is is understanding that number one calories matter and number two carbohydrates should be thought of in a meal to meal basis it's a meal threshold macronutrient you're like well what does that mean yeah that means that it's really about the amount of carbohydrates that you eat at one time that matters and so for individuals you're really looking at 40 grams or less if you consume 40 grams of or less of carbohydrates at one time you can keep insulin in check so yes it's about total calories but it's also about the amount of carbohydrates you have at one time and then if you add in then the muscle component like whether you have more or less does that alter that at all then so that is a great question um i would i would still recommend that you really think about that 40 gram or less per meal but if you are exercising you can increase that amount right so you you earn your carbohydrates you earn your carbohydrates with exercise right okay and and then with people that are putting on weight then um and coming back to this this muscle thing then it it it sort of sounds like that if you um if you don't have that sort of muscle mass in the beginning your you have issues with blood glucose regulation yeah which then leads to obesity diabetes cardiovascular disease alzheimer's yeah so if people want to live long and protect their body from cardiovascular disease hypertension alzheimer's you have to deal with muscle first yeah right and are you seeing that with uh i know you've been originally working with sort of very old people then are you are you also getting them to i guess at that stage of life are you trying to pack muscle on those as well so you have a change in tissue that happens so skeletal muscle when you're young and healthy is different than skeletal muscle when you're older but people can always improve what may be considered explosive and dynamic for someone who's aging or age could be walking up the stairs so it's really important and that goes back to midlife where you have to maintain your training you have to maintain your training mid-life and then you have to keep it up so the concept of assisted living in nursing homes does it have to be that way i don't think so i think that we end up making it so challenging for individuals to not be domesticated right so we have very much domesticated humans so we domesticate humans and when you're young and when i say young when you're in your 40s you have flexibility so you can sit all day and it's not an issue right but if you do that decade after decade after decade then the later life trajectory you can't recover from that because the tissue is less plastic as you age right it has less plasticity it has um you know it's much more difficult to put on muscle and part of that is through this concept of anabolic resistance it's just that the muscle doesn't sense the same amount of protein that it did when you were younger you know so when you're a kid you can get an anabolic response with 5 or 10 grams of protein so not much like your kids my kid kids and then you know midlife you know you're young you're driven by hormones midlife something kind of happens where it changes and you're reliant on diet and then as you kind of creep into that trajectory of really that later stage in life if you don't change the protein dosing correctly then it becomes very difficult to stimulate muscle right it's interesting because most people are very habitual and they eat the same amount that they did in the same way that they did without adjusting for that changing hormonal milia that happens that aging milieu right so so when you say about that when you're in midlife it's important to to sort of prepare you your muscle are you um are you saying that you know both from from your diet and for your training it's a really important stage of your life to sort of start working out and eating healthy it's a non-negotiable right because it's interesting so we talk about diet and exercise and we talk about body composition but we talk about body composition because you want to protect your metabolism you know we were talking earlier about perimenopause menopause women you know typically women in their late 40s early 50s they lose the most amount of muscle during that time of their life and what happens is is they all have issues with cholesterol and you know there's other hormonal things that come into play but they have issues with cholesterol they have issues with blood sugar they all almost all gain weight right so they almost all gain weight and it's something that people in the fitness industry will hear all the time and it's during this time the training is more important than ever before because they were more flexible when they were younger you didn't have to work as hard you don't have to train as detailed or perhaps as specific but you know that perimenopause menopause type uh time frame is really critical because they have a they have a drop in hormones drop in estrogen you can so really to have a good older age quality of life in your older age you you know even if you may not have worked out when you're his 20s if you're in your sort of 40s 50s and then you have to getting into that is going to really set you up well for when you get older um and um i i guess so help you control your weight as well at the same time everything we don't even know what that healthy aging population looks like we don't know right because we've been so programmed to oh i'm just getting older i'm going to do less so now for the first time because we have access to information and knowledge we actually can change that trajectory alzheimer's might might not be a you know expected issue right weight gain um you know hip fractures these things don't have to be expected no but they will be if we don't really change our thought process and shift from this this fat phobic paradigm it's the wrong tissue everybody's talking about losing weight but really what we should be talking about is gaining muscle we're not you know over fat we're under muscled yeah if we get that get that muscle right then we don't have to worry about the body composition because that falls in line [Music] and just just before we come off with this sort of older population and i'm i'm not getting old i'm just 50 in a few months congratulations but um but what what was one of the most interesting sort of you know that in terms of the end of life observations that you found as it relates to health and fitness and wellness that you know a few things that you thought wow you know this is really outside of make sure you build good quality muscle but was there anything else when you were sort of in that process that you thought you know this is really interesting you know so there's two things that come to mind um number one that was very interesting was the habitual patterns that they brought from their life to their aging right they were very specific patterns as it relates to nutrition health and wellness that they could have changed and then there were other individuals that were the healthier group that were very disciplined in their practices and the discipline was very interesting to me that those were the groups that i don't know i eat an onion every week or i decide to exercise at this time and i have a gratitude journal they were very regimented and disciplined the other thing that i thought was so interesting to me as someone who works very hard you know in the entrepreneurial space and i'm sure as most of your listeners are also in that space is that you know i took care of a lot of individuals at the end of their life and the one thing they said was never ever about work ever it was always about family and the relationships and the time that they spent it was never about the things that they had but it was all about the impact that they had on others and that's what was so profound you know and did you find that the people that were i guess more together at that end of their life would were they generally sort of more fit so did was there a connection between being fit and healthy to the quality that they were living at the end of their life always really always but you know it was always so the fitter they were they you know obviously no one is prepared for death but it seemed you know they had less comorbidities which was so helpful you know it wasn't you know 500 medications and you know and a lot of other illnesses but really though the one thing that struck me was their mind frame more than anything else just just more positive in general they were always more positive yeah i guess that makes sense like if what you're saying is if you're you know your waistline and your your brain is it's kind of you know bigger the baseline smaller the brain i suppose if you are fit and healthy and i suppose there's there's this definite connection with with your mind and your brain i suppose yeah and i think that you become very accustomed to thought processes and the more you think a certain way the more it's easier to think a certain way and that can be that's a translatable skill right right so that's a translatable skill to the discipline of exercise and the discipline of having a tight diet and perhaps not being influenced by external decisions right or things that might take you off your goal because i guess also that must be a sort of a life mindset as well you know like i suppose if you're looking after yourself like a car you you care about that and you want it you want to protect it for a long time as opposed to i suppose the opposite way it's like okay well i'm on my way out i'm not gonna care for that anymore you know i think a lot of people lose hope right okay and they also lose the drive and the motivation yeah and you can't ever wait for that because there's a lot of times you don't feel like doing something but every time you succumb to that i don't feel like doing something the more likely you are to succumb to that in the future right and that you know again what i saw and what i thought was so profound is at the end of life it was those individuals that were very mentally disciplined and that transferred over to their physical discipline interesting yeah so let's talk about what to eat and we we talked about this off camera i'm married to a vegetarian that loves animals and won't eat anything with a face on it pretty much apart from a bit of fish what what have you found is is the good and the right things to eat to build muscle i mean it is really not controversial that high quality animal protein is the most important substance for building muscle right you just can't get away from that right so it's really the plant proteins and animal proteins have different amounts of amino acids the amino acids in high quality animal based proteins have the right amount of amino acids to really stimulate muscle tissue right so could you be vegetarian or vegan and build muscle totally it would also be calorically devastating so it would take six cups of quinoa for i don't know one three ounce chicken breast right but you can do it you know the other way to do it would be to have a lot of isolates like pea rice isolates which we don't know the long-term effects of this right so because there's obviously a lot of stuff at the moment you know there's documentaries and books talking about plant you know it's a big thing even in the fitness world it's all emotional right it's and it's distracting so let me start with this the single worst piece of advice i would ever give an aging individual is to stop eating red meat that's the single worst piece of advice i'm a trained geriatrician who's have sat at the bedside of you know critically ill and dying patients for two years the recommendation to go more plant-based in midlife is a horrible recommendation you can get away with it if you're in your 20s but once you hit midlife and we talked about how muscle mass is so important you have to be exquisitely attentive to your nutrition to the point where it would consume a lot of time if if that's the choice to go plant-based really absolutely could it be done it can be done but it would be you you would really have to make sure you're getting enough iron and zinc you know selenium and really high bioavailable nutrients right probably have to do a lot of supplementation but the argument of plant versus animals is not really an argument it's interesting plant i mean these are hard fast biological numbers plants have a different amino acid profile than animals simply right we can there's there's no amount of arguing that would change that concept there's also no amount of arguing that would change the concept that we need a certain amount of amino acids to stimulate muscle protein synthesis so that it's the the trigger of mtor which is mechanistic target of rapamycin which is exquisitely sensitive to leucine which is one of the essential amino acids which is in very robust amounts in animal protein so what about when they talk about you know the fact that he you know in historically we we didn't eat meat but we did we did we did right i don't know i'm sorry so so um documentaries are not validated with science right anyone could produce anything so it's hard to argue science with entertainment documentaries or entertainment or you know yeah i mean so we've been we've through our history as as humans meets being something that's been important to us at least for two million years right it's one of the things that helped evolve our brain right being able to cook and eat fish and and you know substances like that and what about like i guess and i've we had someone on a podcast a while ago i i guess there's there's good me and there's bad me is is what where do you stand so i um i think that's a very loaded question right and i'm going to tell you why so if i said the most important thing that you can do for your health is optimize your body composition which i believe to be true the way in which we optimize body composition is through proper diet and exercise right that's no surprise so if i were to say so if that's my number one priority and then my second priority is to have good quality food but i couldn't afford organic grass-fed meat i would say then you're gonna then i'd much rather have an individual or patient use conventional than i would ever say eat more carbohydrates because you know the the numbers indicate that we already eat more plants 70 of our diet comes from plant-based whether it's carbohydrates or whatever it is so i would never say omit high quality protein because it's not organic or grass-fed and it's uh again i'm i'm sort of picking up on bits of information here but with with what goes with the steroids and the food that they they eat does that not come out and sort of counter what you're trying to do not at all so the data doesn't support that right so before food goes to market it has to be tested simply you can't have a whole bunch of hormones in your meat and they go to market pea protein on the other hand has an enormous amount of estrogen activity but you know animal-based products is not where we're getting it meat you know beef bison that's not where we're getting it and is that is that in terms of good protein then is that what you're saying you probably want to eat some sort like beef or chicken or yeah eggs or fish are fine right is you know um you know i like what you said earlier about your wife being vegetarian because that's probably the most relevant conversation is that there's the emotional aspect to eating animal based proteins that we you know as a as a group people were not that's the one thing that's probably non-negotiable for people but the environmental argument that it has to be organic arguments it's bad for your health argument none of those hold any weight the only argument that really holds weight is if it's an emotional for someone an emotional issue for someone so how did like i guess people are listening to this and they've probably listened to another podcast earlier where as we all have or seen something on youtube where you know all these scientists argue for plant-based as a for example so how does the person sitting in the middle how do you figure that out so a lot of the and i you know you have to find scientists you trust they're not all trustworthy they're very some individuals are very agenda driven and they have a history of being agenda driven so there's one scientist in particular that comes to mind who promotes a low protein diet because it helps with longevity he promotes i think it's three grams per pound body weight which is well below the rda so there has been there have been guidelines that say 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight is what is necessary to just maintain health so now we have a scientist coming out saying it's half that it's devastating that's not good science but don't worry you can buy his fasting diet right that's not good science so you have to really think does this make sense does protein really cause cancer no and in fact there's never been any studies to prove that but you have a group that is very agenda driven for whatever reason because they believe that it's bad but beliefs and facts are totally different i mean the science is reproducible randomized controlled trials of good evidence are reproducible you can't be on the editorial board of you know a journal and say that that's good quality science because that suits your emotional belief and it's interesting in the realm of science we've never had to be more aware of what's happening it's you know more aware of the delivery than ever before it's never been like that how have you tried to to sort of maintain your being your credibility and being impartial and because obviously i guess you're learning about stuff all the time as well as you have done throughout your career how how do you sort of stay true to you know work out what information you're hearing find the good people for the better what have you done through your career i mean so i'm very fortunate to have been exposed to um academic individuals who have a lot of integrity a lot of honor and a lot of integrity that that are very unbiased and very aware of their own filtration and looking at good evidence i mean i've been trained by some of the best and that's fortunate not everybody has that um network and and capacity to have that kind of influence so i feel very fortunate did you search out those i did i did and what did you do to find though where did you go to say i want this person to so i um you know dr donald lehmann is one of the most well respected protein scientists he trained me he still mentors me can check out our youtube we have conversations every week it's 20 years later of one of the finest scientists who has provided mentorship and he's very good at looking at data and saying hey you know what what's the mechanism of action here where did this come from why do you think that this works and you know is this reproducible has this this is an interesting concept but is this does this make sense um you know and so he has a network of physicians that also provide really good randomized control trials that are very transparent and then you have a other group that gets a tremendous amount of funding some of the ivy league schools that the the recommendations it's it's very agenda driven and so how do you kind of parse that out it's hard it's hard for the average individual who um perhaps even is in the medical profession but not necessarily trained by a phd it's tough it's tough so in terms of recommendations then so i'm i'm you know going to go back this weekend and i might write okay i need to get my protein right um what is and i guess it's different different from different ages but in general is there a rule in terms of one what type of protein that you should sort of search out and then two dosage so how often should i eat it when should i eat it what does that look like so you know high quality protein is animal based proteins right and that can be beef bison chicken fish eggs whey protein is also good the next question is how much and that does vary but a safe recommendation is one gram per pound ideal body weight right and listen you can go lower you can go higher but that is across the board a safe recommendation now now you're talking about dosing dosing is really important and i will say the most important meal is that first meal it doesn't matter what time you have it but you are fasted you are in a catabolic state so getting your protein dosing correct at that first meal is the most important my recommendation would be to optimize the system at that first meal so the body's primed for you know turning over muscle stimulating muscle protein synthesis so that would be around 40 to 45 grams whether you're male or female really yeah just get that one just get that one meal right right and that's the that's your first like your breakfast if that's whenever you eat it whatever time that is right yeah so for about 40 grams for for breakfast so 40 to 45 grams for breakfast will trigger that mtor signaling that we talked about because that leucine content is high enough right and that's really important and then your next meal doesn't have to be necessarily nearly as high you could get away with 25 grams you know we know that muscle protein synthesis we know that that mechanism goes runs for about two two and a half hours so then you can eat four or five hours later do you need to have another robust protein meal you can there's no harm but really as long as you're getting some kind of calorie that system is already going right so you and your like your husband's a navy seal pretty thick machine there what what would he be doing like what's what's his typical sort of schedule just to give us he eats a lot and he's very liberal with the carbs he runs his idea of running for fun you know he runs for 14 miles for fun right he's crazy um but he earns his carbohydrates so his protein intake is high it's about 200 grams i would say his carbohydrate intake is probably throughout the day is that okay and his carbohydrate intake is probably more than 200 grams but he trains all the time doesn't have to worry about body composition right and you know his fat intake he doesn't even measure that [Music] so what what do you do if you've got like i guess for you know he's he's obviously all over the place you know not knowing where he's going to be how would someone like that or even someone that travels how do you sort of get that diet when you're living a real life you know do you supplement that to see you know do you have to have a bag of pouches stuff no i think you can as long as you're wise and you know kind of what you need to be doing which is prioritizing protein first and thinking you know you're not really going to exceed 40 grams of carbohydrates per meal unless perhaps you're training then that's that's really a good starting point and fat you know whether it's carbohydrates or fat that's all based on appetite what you would choose what you would like that kind of a thing right and what about supplement like are you are you sort of in favor of like protein powders and that kind of thing and supplements i am so i do think that it is hard to get what you need just eating regularly you know i do i think creatine is great creatine is great for muscle it's great for your brain it's great for aging individuals i have all my patients on a multivitamin right fish oil vitamin d sometimes liposomal glutathione often actually so that's the master antioxidant right yeah and what's what's bad for muscle so both in diet a lot of drugs drugs statins drugs yeah and is there anything like lifestyle related like i know for guys certainly when you get to a certain age yeah i'm hoping i feel mine's okay totally can drop it can but you've been training and been fit your whole life and is that why it it probably won't drop like like you know if you weren't doing that yes and also managing stress and recovery right so a lot of the seals that i take care of in the practice they are you know their testosterone wouldn't be as high as you would think because their stress and recovery isn't as optimized as you would think so i think you know it's very important to train hard but it's also equally as important to recover and that when you do that you you know i think almost everyone is going to require testosterone supplementation at some point i mean i don't know my dad is 75 and his testosterone is in the 800's that's outrageous he might not have to but you know number one i don't think that there's any a problem with it right it's pretty well documented now that there isn't but i you know it's possible that if you train and you recover and you sleep and you get the right nutrients you can maintain optimal levels of testosterone throughout aging right but again we don't know what that optimized human looks like because we're so domesticated you know we're domesticated in our minds and in our ability to get information and our ability to push past discomfort physical discomfort but once you master some of those mechanisms then there's no telling what it really looks like right for aging and you are certain you're saying that stress does affect that oh my gosh totally drinking smoking marijuana right so alco alcohol is not good for muscle either no it's that's a shame but i mean you know a few glasses of wine is that you know is is it are you like totally it disrupts sleep right sleep it's metabolized differently um do you drink i don't well i'm pregnant but no i don't right so even a few glasses of wine well that kind of affects it but it'd be interesting to see what how you felt if you took it out yeah i i do it for a period of time i'll do several months and i'll feel great and then i kind of start again and and i've done that for years and i i know over time over time i know it's not great and i know like you say i don't sleep particularly well you wake up a bit groggy in the morning and it's only weekends but i it's just one of those sort of habits that you you kind of stick to but uh but i think being very deliberate about the habits so if you know you're going on vacation that might be a good time but if you're going through a heavy training block and you know that you've got stress coming up so most people are like oh i'm stressed i'm going to drink but during that stress period is the last is the last time you should you should be drinking during that time that's good so what about um like you're very relevant at the moment but sort of your in your immunity you're developing your your immune system to fight off whatever kind of things are out there you know what what's you i've read about the link between muscle and and developing immunity can you yeah so this is a really newer complex science and this is exercise immunology this is must the skeletal muscle connection with immune health is interesting and novel there's really good data out of pederson's lab and she talks about muscle as an endocrine organ which secretes myokines well and what just yeah just remember i will tell you so so you hear a lot about cytokines right cytokines being this inflammatory proteins that go throughout the body like interleukin-6 well interleukin-6 is produced from the immune system but it's also produced from the musculoskeletal system and when it is produced from contracting skeletal muscle it actually has an anti-inflammatory effect a more immune modulating effect so what what yeah in practical terms so what does that actually mean resistance train okay and you're you're gonna sort of be you will secrete you will contract your skeletal muscle and you will secrete these proteins called myokines that go throughout the body that have an immune modulating effect as well as anti-inflammatory and what i guess you know i don't like to talk too much about this sort of covered thing but it it is relevant to the conversation but i suppose with this spreading and people getting it in your view as a as a doctor um do you think a lot of that is because of there's a lot of extremely unhealthy people that don't have muscles not eating the right stuff body composition is more important now than ever before right survivability is directly related to muscle mass what to watch muscle mass your ability to survive any illness any injury is directly related to your body composition that's pretty profound you know so it's interesting it's kind of like a wake-up call for everybody and why do you think this the the that it's and i know like we're a lot of people who listen to this are part of the fitness industry they've got clubs they're trainers and i guess they've been sort of pushing this message that look you know we should fitness center should be open people should be working out there's all kinds of reasons why why do you think that probably more people in government and then you know there's some smart people from what is there's also some not some smart but there's there's a lot of smart people in you know they're running these countries and also i guess with a good medical background what what do you think about why those uh medical representatives are not doing more about sort of pushing these things that are obviously out there it's really interesting and i think this comes down to a fundamental flaw of the way medicine is approached it's very problem oriented and symptom based so if there's a problem i'm going to fix it if you cut yourself i'm going to give you a band-aid as opposed to saying you know i have this leaky this leaky boat i should probably plug the holes in the boat as opposed to just trying to get the water out does that make sense right so we have the the concept and the the paradigm and thought process of medicine is you have a high blood pressure here's your pill for this you can't sleep here's your other pill for that but and and that goes and the government still sees it that way and just it's an old way of looking at medicine right it is very unique still to this day to think about a more solution-oriented root cause approach it's new it's it means that we have to do something and that we're responsible it's not just pharmaceuticals that will say you have high cholesterol here's your statin you know um so it's just a flawed you know paradigm of thinking and you think it would take so much stress off the the the hospital beds and we know it does but hospital beds are big money yeah i guess yeah you know and also if a doctor is willing to disseminate that information they better be doing it that also takes effort you know it's interesting because the medical profession is trained in medication management diagnosis medication it's just it's the framework for the way it functions it's not trained in here's your exercise prescription here's your lifestyle prescription here's ways that you should reduce stress and here's how you should eat it's not like that is that because of the money in some of these drugs and because i know my grandmother like she's 93 and like you just wouldn't believe the amount of things she takes i'm like god you know and also the cost of of these as well you know she's been doing this for years um i guess there must be a big financial um financial leverage to make that so it's interesting not for the physicians right so people think physicians get money from drug companies you don't right unless you are working with the company you don't it is not physicians are not paid to give a prescription for a ppi right they're not which is we're not paid to give a prescription for a statin it's a it's a misunderstanding or incentivized not incentivized right that's illegal right you know um so that's interesting because that is a very common misconception i just think that the the way in which medicine is developed it's not necessarily a healing art but it can be and i think the most effective physicians are those that combine you know traditional medicine and are well trained in traditional medicine and you combine that with more alternative approaches and that's really the key when you think about longevity yeah and do you think so do you think some of these these doctors that just don't necessarily have trained on that so it's it's like well i've been taught with medicine and how to combine these things and that's the only way i know to fix this issue is that more about i think it comes down to the individual person so medicine as a culture is really designed for diagnosis and treatment of illness they don't design physicians to be free thinkers or question why this is the process or how is this going to work but i think as we get more individuals that are free thinkers and are more creative and seeing you know that there needs to be a solution then we'll start to see progression is that what your approach has been find the answer yes people come to me because i'm the last stop so they've seen 14 other physicians and i'll find the answer i won't settle yeah there's always a reason why you know and very rarely is that reason it's just genetic that's not true so you have to find whatever that reason is does that does that sort of kind of from i guess that you kind of get these communities i suppose in in all businesses does that does that when you when you are a little bit more of a free thinker and on the cutting edge does that sort of push you out a little bit from you know the sort of did the people sort of like look at you a little bit differently within the the professions no because you earn your credentials okay so one of the things i did is i became very credentialed i mean i did my fellowship at washu that's one of the most well-respected institutions in the country so then if i say okay well here's my opinion i'm trained in this it's not all i mean you know you just got your degree online no i didn't i spent 17 years i did two residencies and a fellowship so you earned that credibility okay and i put in my time right so you get more people that put in their time then their opinion there's a weight of an opinion and also an openness to learn i ask my colleagues all the time hey have you seen this study what do you think about this i still stay in contact with the professors and the academics at washu right because that's where all the changes are happening so i think that um you know you have to be unwilling to settle but you also have to put in the time to earn the credibility and to be taught how to think outside the box right you have to be taught to think and analyze information analyze data and be okay with being wrong right because that yeah at that point you may there be okay being because i was going to sort of ask that i suppose when you when you've got those credentials and that title for example it's like well look if i am wrong you know this could blow my whole career destroy my reputation but in you know in education it's all about learning knowledge okay and you learn and things change and you get more information and it's really i think true wisdom comes from being able to be flexible and say you know what i was wrong on this yeah yeah yeah i agree i just i suppose from for me thinking it would probably be one of the things that may stop more of that kind of you know pushing the boundaries because you are going to fail it's like you know you're going to be wrong oh my gosh i messaged my one friend who's a phd and i'm like oh my god i said the stupidest thing about gluconeogenesis you know i have pregnancy brain i was exhausted and he's like just go in there and say you're wrong and i was like oh yeah okay just do that yeah and that's okay do you think other people in that world though are scared of because you you seem as though you're probably someone who don't care what people think like into if they disagree with you you're like well sorry i i'm gonna keep pushing but do you think that might stop certain people from doing well yeah i mean oftentimes on my social media i'm just so sick of it it's so cumbersome but it's my responsibility yeah there are times where i'm like oh i'm going to post this and this is going to be you know so controversial but it's there is a level of responsibility yeah have you found at the moment like with in the world today that that that that sort of sensitivity from people because you you know you got a big social media following is is it a lot um are people more touchy about what what you put out now than probably what they were previously this period they're equally as touchy they're equally as touching it's very emotional yeah you know yeah so so moving on just um i said to my wife i'd sort of ask a little bit about this but but muscles for women um what you know i i suppose a lot of times people think well you know i don't want to build muscle because it's not going to build on size and is it you know is it something i should do and can i do it what what what are some of the i suppose things you've learned from trying to explain this and and what um you know what what is what is i guess some of the advice you can give for people that are thinking about i guess there's two big things here one eating more protein and particularly animal protein and two you want to put on more muscle it takes a lot of effort to put on muscle women think oh man if i lift that 15 pound weight i'm definitely gonna get big biceps you know how hard it is to put on muscle yeah you know my husband was just talking about that going in there's no guarantee but what it will do is it will change body composition you'll look better you'll look tighter probably have more energy you'll be able to manage your diet better meaning you'll be able to manage your glucose better it is very challenging and the most important task that you take on women absolutely have to work because as they age the hormonal decline works against them right you know so really putting on muscle and really optimizing for protein is is again a non-negotiable all right and my mum for example like for her as well like in terms of training would you be saying to her that she should you know be hopping away and and um so your mom is 95. no that's my grandma my mom's seven like 73. okay so would you would that be something so for her i would say and this is really good data out of stu phillips lapse who works a lot with this population is that she should do higher volume lighter weights higher volume but she should do things that that it's hard to do yeah should not domesticate herself which is the natural inclination right and the same same applies to her you know getting more getting getting more of that sort of protein intake even even more important in her right okay yeah that's strange that sort of i wouldn't have necessarily thought that about you know like particularly sort of advising my mom to do that but um and get her first meal of the day correct get her first and her last yeah so just before we wrap up i've got a couple of questions i want to finish off with but um if people are interested in finding out more because you know we've skimmed across the surface of a lot of i suppose deep information that you spent years studying how can people sort of go into a little bit you know yeah see search you out find a bit more information learn a bit more right so my website is dr gabrielle lyon and i have a great newsletter that has validated science information that i think is really well done and so they can sign up for my newsletter i also have conversations with my mentor dr donnell layman on my youtube channel and i really do this because i want him to be able to reach the public and he wouldn't do that otherwise right he's fine just doing research and writing papers but his information is so valuable that people don't have access to an individual like him i mean he is a world-class researcher so i interview him in depth and we talk about our experiences um every week so they can sign up for that on my youtube right and i have a in really interesting a protein cycling course coming protein cycling yeah so tell us what's that gonna wow so you know we talked about um the evolution of information and i if people follow me or interested in some of the content i put out which i really work hard at putting out a lot i always talk about protein in an even distribution throughout the day that might not necessarily be what we need to do right which is interesting so this is all of course about really the concept of protein cycling protein cycling diet my protein cycling protocol and it really is about getting the first meal right and maybe allowing that second meal to be lower in protein and then the subsequent meals depending on your goal more robust so you can continue to stimulate muscle tissue and is is that is that research on protein is that still fairly new then um you know are we still we are we still learning a lot more about um so there are core fundamental principles that really haven't changed right um but the integration of the information and really thinking about how that's applicable is and can have some nuances yeah so excellent so final question then escape your limits is about escaping what you've believed is impossible and gone on to make it possible what would be an example of um where you've escaped your own personal limits um so this is interesting i would say in education right so growing up people say oh you know why would you do that that's so hard or you know why don't you just marry someone rich and and go be a flight attendant which there's nothing wrong with that but i would say when people would say wait wow you can't do that i'm like okay watch me you know and it was just this constant drive for personal excellence through education right where did that come from really stubborn just like my daughter but um you know i think that you know there's there's just an internal tenacity just for continued self-improvement because i'm very aware of the exquisite shortness of life you know and so to continue to drive and compare myself to myself is really what has helped so much and it allows for exponential growth yeah after that fantastic well there's some great lessons there i've certainly learned a lot and i've made me think i've got so much more to learn as well after after this conversation so thank you so much for your time yeah um maybe when you back over this side we'll we'll have to have a part two when my knowledge is a little bit higher on the subject and i've been able to sort of make a an impact on my mum and my wife not to say they need it but so gabrielle thank you so much i appreciate your time thank you i hope you enjoyed this podcast if you did then please go over to itunes and subscribe to the escape your limits podcast leave a review leave a comment it really would help us a lot to continue to keep these going [Music] you

Channel: Escape Fitness

Views: 336,007

Keywords: escape fitness, gym design, fitness experience, workout, training, mindset, fitness equipment, corporate fitness, entrepreneur, escape your limits, athlete, Gabrielle Lyon, dr, health, wellness, longevity, muscle, medicine, muscle-centric medicine, doctor, protein, obesity, Matthew Januszek

Id: vzVcFHUrsR4

Length: 62min 56sec (3776 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020