“Increase Your Dietary Protein Per Meal”
This episode is all about protein and gaining muscle. Dr. Lyon dives into how we can use protein when breaking a fast to get the proper nutrients.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is a Washington University fellowship-trained physician in Nutritional Science and Geriatrics and is board certified in Family Medicine and Osteopathic Manipulation. She completed her undergraduate degree in Human Nutrition, Vitamin, and Mineral Metabolism at the University of Illinois. Dr. Lyon is the founder of the Institute for Muscle Centric-Medicine. She services the leaders, innovators, mavericks, and executives in their prospective field. In addition, Gabrielle works closely with the Special Operations Military and has a private practice that services patients worldwide.
In this podcast, The Power of Protein on Longevity, we cover:
- Why protein is vital in your diet and the reason you should eat more of it
- Do plant-based diets meet protein needs?
- How mTOR is a key regulator in maintaining skeletal muscle mass
- Why your glucose could spike after eating protein
- A common myth about cholesterol that you need to stop believing
- Is there really a correlation between red meat and cancer?
Why Do You Need Protein?
We need protein for everything. Muscle is the organ of longevity, and you can’t build muscle without protein. We also need protein for hormones and neurotransmitters. For muscles to be stimulated, it requires leucine. Leucine is one of the essential amino acids; we must get it from our diet. We need essential amino acids to stimulate the skeletal muscle. You need 30 grams of protein to trigger this stimulus. You must reach that amino acid threshold in the blood to trigger this response. As we age, this response becomes more challenging. Skeletal muscles are nutrient-sensing organs; their capacity to sense nutrients, specifically protein, decreases as we age.
Can You Make A Plant-Based Diet Work?
Are you willing to give up your health for animals? If you are plant-based in your fifties and sixties, it will be detrimental. Plant-based people tend to be the ones with the lowest bone density and the most nutrient deficiencies. Plus, there are cavity issues and hair issues. Only about 2% of the population really thrive on a vegan and vegetarian diet. It’s essential to be open-minded. Many of the people that thrive with a vegetarian diet are blood type A. However, there is little evidence to support the correlation. Dr. Lyon says that people who thrive on a plant-based diet will do so because their microbiome is more suited to that lifestyle.
What is mTOR and How to Stimulate mTOR In Your Body?
Stimulating mTOR (mechanistic target of rapamycin) is critical. This complex exists in every single cell in the body. mTOR is exquisitely sensitive to amino acids. The liver and pancreas have mTOR in them, and they are more susceptible to carbohydrates and insulin. Plus, the brain has mTOR. It’s a growth propagator; it’s stimulated in the body by different substrates, not just protein. You want to trigger mTOR in skeletal muscle through amino acids. In order to stimulate mTOR, you must hit 30 grams of protein in one sitting. It takes between four and five hours for your system to reset. So, you will want to separate your meals by four or five hours.
Eating More Than Once A Day To Build Muscle
Dr. Lyon doesn’t recommend only eating only one meal a day. If you’re young, your eating schedule doesn’t matter as much. If you’re not in your twenties, then you need to be strategic about how you are eating. If you only eat one meal a day, and you’re up against anabolic resistance, then you will lose skeletal muscle over the course of your life. When you’re young, that doesn’t matter as much. As you go through perimenopause, the muscle will become challenging to maintain. However, intermittent fasting can still be a great tool. Fasting is a fabulous way to control calories and train your circadian rhythm. Also, fasting will allow for bowel rest. Fasting can alleviate the bowel and give your digestive tract a rest.
Why Does Your Glucose Spike After Eating Protein?
Protein can actually cause an insulin spike, but it is a phase one insulin release. Typically with carbohydrates, there’s a two-phase response, the release of insulin and then the generation of more insulin to bring down blood sugar. When you eat protein, it will cause an initial insulin release. This will help stimulate your muscles. So, you will see a spike in insulin. As it relates to glucose, for every 100 grams of protein that you eat, 60 grams through gluconeogenesis of carbohydrates is created. If you are a forward protein eater, you become very good at generating your own glucose. So, your blood sugar will remain a little bit higher over 24 hours because your body is generating its own glucose.
Busting Myths About Cholesterol and Red Meat
Dietary cholesterol doesn’t impact, for the most part, blood level cholesterol. The body will make its own cholesterol. When you see triglycerides go up, it’s excess carbohydrates. There’s a lot of controversy about LDL and particles. The average person with no cardiovascular history and no issues with their LDL could probably eat a high-fat diet and be okay. If you are a hyper responder, then you probably shouldn’t. There’s never been evidence to suggest that eating red meat is a problem. Plus, the evidence doesn’t ever support red meat and cancer. The worst piece of advice someone could get is to go plant-based. High-quality nutrients that are bioavailable come from meat.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 0:00
Increase your dietary protein per meal amount, you can understand that high quality protein is essential for the way in which you age.
Dr. Mindy 0:09
I am a woman on a mission that is dedicated to teaching you just how powerful your body was built to be. I like to do that by bringing you the latest science, the greatest thought leaders and applicable steps that help you tap into your own internal healing power. The purpose of this podcast is to give you the power back and help you believe in yourself again, my name is Dr. Mindy Pels. And I want to thank you for spending part of your day with me. On this episode of the resetter podcast, I bring you Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Now let’s dive in to what you’re about to listen to. So Dr. Lyon is a medical doctor who she calls herself a muscle, she does muscle centric medicine, which is really cool, because what we’re learning a lot right now is that muscle is the organ of longevity. And she’ll talk about that in this interview. But what is so profound about this conversation is we really dialed in to protein, all different types of protein. So whether you’re a vegan or you’re carnivore, or you’re trying to figure out how much protein, this is the conversation for you. I think what’s really important as you move into listening to this conversation is to keep an open mind. Because what is surfacing in science right now, what we are seeing clinically, and you’ll see it with what Dr. Lyon talked a lot about how we need more muscle as we age and especially in end of life care, we are seeing that there are certain forms of protein that really serve us and some proteins that are a little bit too weak and are not building the proper muscle profile that we need. So I really wanted to bring her on because we talk so much in our fasting group, about how we use protein in conjunction or to break a fast so that we are getting the right nutrients so that we are not only benefiting from a toffee g but that we are also stimulating something called mTOR which builds muscle and we dove into mTOR we dove into a toffee g on this episode. So if you want to know how much protein to eat if you want to know what type of protein if you want to know how to combine protein with fasting if you want to know if you should eat conventional meat, is it worth it to spend more money on grass fed? Or can you just do conventional? This is the episode for you. I this is like no other podcast interview I’ve ever done for you guys. We everything you need to know about protein, everything you need to know about building muscle, Dr. Lyon will answer for you. So as always, I hope you enjoy I hope this information enhances and improves your health. And if you love it, please send it out into the world leave us a review. I do this so that you guys can be the healthiest version of you possible. Enjoy.
One health topic I feel like isn’t discussed enough is the importance of a healthy microbiome for breaking down hormones. So hopefully you’ve heard me say this before just because you eat make hormones doesn’t mean you use hormones, you need a healthy microbiome to be able to break those hormones down. Yet if you’re like me fasting a lot busy lifestyle, finding time to get enough greens enough vegetables into your diet can be challenging. So I recently discovered Organa phi as products and I am in love with everything that they’re putting out there. But for my microbiome, my favorite product is their green juice. So check this out. Not only does it have crellin, spirulina in it and red beet and lemon, wheatgrass all the things you need to grow a healthy microbiome, but the number one ingredient is a prebiotic powder. Now prebiotics will feed the good bacteria that are in your gut and these bacteria are breaking down estrogen. They’re making neurotransmitters like GABA, they’re giving you serotonin to keep you happy. So you want to feed these bacteria and glue Organa finds green juice does exactly that. So check it out. You guys know I like to use it to break a fast I’ve also been using it in my fasting window in the morning. And the great thing about Organa phi is not only are all their products clean and free of toxicity, but they’re going to give you 20% off so all you have to do to order their products is to go to Organa phi.com backslash pills. O r, g knifi.com, backslash, P e elzie. And you’ll get 20% off. Again, let me know how the products work for you excited to share this tool for boosting your microbiome and making sure that you’re breaking those hormones down and using them properly. Okay, so here’s the the million dollar question that I want to start with. Why do we need protein? I feel like we’re hearing so much right now about why protein is so important. Like, it’s like it’s making a comeback, for some reason,
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 5:43
never went away. I mean, let’s be frank protein really never went away, but it’s this black sheep of the macronutrient. Family.
Dr. Mindy 5:50
Yes, right. Well said Well said. So is it a black sheep? And why do we need it? Well,
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 5:56
it’s really interesting. Let’s first start about why it’s the black sheep. Yeah, we can all agree that excess carbohydrates are bad. Nobody’s gonna argue that excess carbohydrates, excess sugar is bad, right? Right. Yep. gonna totally screw up your metabolism, fat, okay, so there’s been a lot of controversy around fat, but we can all agree that some fat is good for you. Fat is a great source of calories, there’s all kinds of things that we can agree on its benefit, then we come to protein, and protein is has a face, which makes it very emotional for people. Literally, this is the only macronutrient that people become emotional about. So true. And now what you have here is you have science, and you have health. And then on the other side of this, you have emotion. And when you mix science and emotion together, conversations become very confusing. Conversations become very difficult to be applicable, right? It becomes very difficult, because then there are these biases, and we all have biases, but these become overarching in the conversation of protein. And you asked me well, so there’s that aspect of it being the black sheep of it having a face of it being very emotional, then you have very big groups that feel very strongly about not eating animal based sources of protein, which then leads to conversations that will support that, that these groups will try to make, for example, that animal animals are bound for the environment, which couldn’t be further from the truth as it relates to the US. That’s not where the majority of greenhouse gas comes from. Right? Yes, yes, Cent or so is from other things like industry and electricity and travel, all the other things. So there’s that aspect. And then you said, Well, why do we need protein? And I would say, we need protein for everything. For turnover for kidney, liver, brain, all the turnover in our body, we need protein. And we need it from a very obvious component as it relates to skeletal muscle. When you think about muscle as the organ of longevity, which really determines the trajectory of how we age, muscle, protein, and muscle, you can’t build it without it. Okay? I mean, that’s just a few right? You needed right? hormones and neurotransmitters. You need these amino acids for nearly everything in the body.
Dr. Mindy 8:27
Yeah. Okay, so let’s, let’s start with this idea. Just so we can reframe protein. I don’t want to lose the first thing you said, which is, eating meat is not bad, is what I heard is not bad for the environment. Explain that. You know, my husband’s a huge environmentalist. And he always puts this point out there that the vegans think they’re doing something right for the environment. But that’s not the case. So help bring us up to speed as to why meats not bad for the environment.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 8:57
First. First of all, I’d like to say that I think everybody’s trying to do their best. Either you’re vegan or whether you’re carnivore, we are all in this together. And instead of dividing us, which is I think, really, really happened over the last really five years on I don’t know, Mindy, I’m curious as to what your thoughts but I really think as of late, we’re becoming more divided. And we are not the enemy of each other. And that is mistake. Yep. When you think about agriculture, this is and when you think about greenhouse gas, let’s take greenhouse gas. It’s a very complex system, it is not the cause far and then, you know, they’re emitting greenhouse gas, and it’s a problem. It is so much more complex than that. And it is an entire life cycle. And when you look at the EPA data, there’s some data I was just looking at the charts from 2017. And it broke down what the contribution of greenhouse gas is, as it relates to different quote products. And when you look at agriculture, agriculture as a whole, and I’m defining that as fruits and vegetables. I’m defining that as cattle, dairy, chicken, everything makes up 9%. The most that it’s ever going to contribute to greenhouse gases is 9% maximum. When you break that down, three and a half percent of that would be coming from me. So let’s say you were to do a Meatless Monday, then you still have to get your protein from some sources and those sources would be, you know, vegetables grains, however else you can make that up. So the biggest impact that you would ever have from doing a Meatless Monday of meatless Meatless Monday, that would be interesting. Monday would be maybe, point 1%, nothing, not much. Right, but, but the reason that they target meat and these groups target meat is because there’s they believe, morally, that we shouldn’t be eating animal products. So whatever needs to happen to push a narrative. And these narratives actually take us further away from health rather than bringing us together and helping us understand what is in actuality happening. It is much more of a problem. If you live in Minnesota and you’re eating avocados. What okay explains transportation, you are now transporting food from Mexico or you’re transporting food from Valley in California to Minnesota or Alaska.
Dr. Mindy 11:28
Yeah. For the environment. It’s harder on the environment, because much has
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 11:32
changed and contributes. So of agricultural agriculture as a whole contributes 9%. Electricity, transportation and industry make up the rest.
Dr. Mindy 11:42
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s a you sound.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 11:44
It’s just the facts. Yeah. And really are when you think about it, our meat consumption has already gone down. We’re already down the red meat consumption, I think is down between 15 and 17%. Over the last decade, how come? I don’t know. I mean, maybe it’s partially the narrative. Yeah, it could be continue to decrease our meat consumption. obesity rates have increased, you know, as it relates to greenhouse gas in the environment. It’s really more of a population issue.
Dr. Mindy 12:13
Yep. Yeah. Amen. Yeah. So So also, what about this? What
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 12:17
about all the food we’re wasting? Yep, that has to go somewhere. Yep. But everything, but we blame me for everything. And it’s actually just a scapegoat of a much bigger issue and a much bigger problem, which is having kind of a dysregulation and communication in addition to agenda, for example, something like the game changers, agenda and media pushing things forward that are actually not evidence base, and not scientific. And, you know, someone would ask me, Well, why do you care so much about this? I’m gonna tell you why. I was lucky enough to train under one of the world’s leading experts in protein metabolism, who 20 years later is still my mentor. Now, this is a relationship of 20 years and his name is Dr. Donna layman. And I studied protein metabolism. I study human nutrition. my undergrad, then, you know, I went to do a fellowship. I went to medical school residency and then a fellowship. And my fellowship was in nutritional sciences and geriatrics. So I did clinical work and geriatrics, and then I did clinical research in obesity. I was absolutely not prepared to be a geriatrician. I don’t know if you have you’ve ever worked with the end of life?
Dr. Mindy 13:32
No, no. I mean, well, I have been with patients. I’ve been in for situations where I was with patients as they passed. That’s the closest, how many
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 13:43
patients was that? You said? Four? Yeah. Can you imagine doing that? And seeing those kind of patients 30 patients a day? Well, yeah, no, we’re so could you could you imagine what that would be? Like? Oh, it’d be. So second reading. Yeah, devastating. So you’re going to work and you know, for your entire day, you’re going to get up and do research at the more in the mornings, you’re getting up at 4am you’re gonna go do biopsies, muscle biopsies, then you’re going to go and round on the patients that are all end of life, injured, you know, typically demented or something. You know, you’re talking 30, you might see 30 patients in a day for two years. Wow. So this mean, brings you back to why is this concept so important to me, and this is actually where the concept of muscle centric medicine was born, and was that you know, after the first couple months of being at the bedside of these patients that perhaps would never walk again, and seeing and seeing how crippled and working in nursing homes I had around it on nursing homes every weekend. I mean, it was Wow. So devastating to see the way in which end of life happens. And you have to understand that it’s directly related to their capacity to Hold on muscle. Right? Right, the muscle is actually the organ of longevity. It is a secretary organ. And where protein plays a role in that is that, you know, it’s so fascinating right now. We have the internet, and we have groups. And we have there’s lots of conversations. So there’s a lot of debate that happens in the middle, your 30s 40s 50s, even your 60, you know, everyone’s debating, but on the extreme end, there is no debate, what is going to help support a body. And you know, in the middle, when we’re all helping, john, and we can invite you or we can all fight about how you should be vegan. No, you should be carnivore. And there’s this incredible conversation, but I am telling you, as that trajectory happens, no one is arguing, when you are sitting at the bedside of a person who is never gonna walk again, cannot remember their daughter’s name. You don’t have that conversation anymore. Interesting. You know, and I feel like I’m talking so much, and you’re being so generous with no, no,
Dr. Mindy 16:07
I know that way, the way I love to get information to people so that they can change the paradigm in which they’re sitting in is I think you have to have come above it and have a bigger vision for it before you get into the detail of it. So I am accessible. I love being able to share all this. Yeah, like I’m sucked into the story. Because I think that makes incredible sense, right? And like I told you before we got on in that in our resetter collaborative on Facebook, where we all fast together, we have to break up fights between the vegans and the carnivores all the time. And I agree with you that there is a place in which we can come together. I love how you started this out that we’re not enemies of each other. And there’s a way to rise above the rhetoric and the little social media, sound bites and think a little deeper for ourselves. So help us understand why protein builds muscle like and yes, can I get protein and broccoli. I mean Protea broccoli, right? protein.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 17:12
So let me before I tell you that, let me highlight this, say end of life individual or this person who is much older in a nursing home, and we have all seen them, right? We’ve all seen our parents become frail, we’ve all seen the, you know, the Walker, the whole thing, muscle has to be fed, later on in life, muscle must be fed, it is a non negotiable. A plant based diet, unfortunately, while you can navigate that when you are younger, absolutely cannot sustain an individual. When we think about what is medically acceptable for their well being. Wow, that is really powerful to understand, because the conversation isn’t just about is protein good for me. Should you be on a vegan diet? Should you be on a carnivore diet? That is a little linear, right? But we are thinking about this as groups in your group, we have to think where am I at in my age? What kind of activity am I doing? How metabolically flexible am I? What is my carbohydrate tolerance? What what is actually the information that I am getting? And where am i right now? If that makes sense? Yeah, we’ll talk about protein. And we’ll talk about why protein is so important for muscle. And this is absolutely essential to understand and really not up for debate. These are hard, fast biological numbers that I’m going to share with you. Are you ready? Yeah, go for it. In order for muscle to be, quote, stimulated this concept of muscle protein synthesis. It requires branched chain amino acid, it requires specifically an amino acid called leucine. And leucine is one of the essential amino acids, meaning we must get it from our diet. And actually, I will come back at the end, if you remind me there is some new rodent data that would say that we may be able to make essential amino acids. Brand new. I love it, the all new humans, but it really interesting. So we need these amino acids, these essential amino acids, particularly leucine. So there’s leucine, isoleucine, and Beilein these branched chain amino acids, which are very high in animal products, specifically leucine at a certain threshold to then stimulate skeletal muscle. Okay, what does that look like? Okay, well, two and a half grams is roughly 30 grams of high quality protein, whether it’s beef, chicken, egg, fish has a little lower quality protein, they’re gravity bearing animals, so you need this 30 grams to actually trigger the stimulus.
Dr. Mindy 19:55
Okay? Okay. 30 grams at one time at one
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 19:59
time. Great. point you cannot sit on a protein shake throughout the day, you must reach that amino acid threshold in the blood to trigger this response. Okay? non negotiable. As we age, this response becomes more challenging. Skeletal muscle is a nutrient sensing organ. And its capacity to sense nutrients, specifically protein decrease as we age.
Dr. Mindy 20:26
Wow. Because of why is that? I mean it, can I
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 20:29
anabolic resistance, and it is something cellularly that happens. And it happens to everybody. The issue then becomes how do you overcome anabolic resistance. So anabolic resistance means that as you age, your body becomes less sensitive to being able to be stimulated by the protein, the proteins that you’re ingesting. So for example, a perfect example, my daughter who’s two years old, I could give her five grams of protein. And that five grams of protein, you know, could give her just maybe one ounce of beef and then some vegetables, she will get a max anabolic response to her muscle. Okay. And she’s driven. Yeah, very cute. Quite a handful, typically ends up on the floor. So thank goodness for the fact that she can eat just a small amount of protein and get a Mac stimulation. Okay, whereas you were I, if we eat 30 grams of protein. And this is animal based protein, because of that leucine content. For example, if you wanted to get that in Kenya, you would need about four to six cups of Qianlong. Wow, to reach that threshold, wow. It becomes a metabolically unfavorable as it relates to caloric consumption and carbohydrates.
Dr. Mindy 21:47
Got it? Same thing with like, like, like broccoli, I mean, broccoli brought has protein,
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 21:53
right? So broccoli, the amount of broccoli you would have to meet eat, to reach that threshold of two and a half grams of a minimum at one time to trigger skeletal muscle would be I can’t even I mean, that would be so difficult. Your stomach would hurt. I mean, you’re talking about a ton of broccoli. Right? Now you bring up an interesting point. And this is when we think about protein. And we think about the amino acids. Does broccoli have protein? amino acids? Absolutely. does say beef have protein, amino acids? Absolutely. These amino acids exists in different amounts, they’re all there. But they exist in different amounts. And it’s so critical to understand that it’s the amount that makes the metabolism out of protein is one sitting one sitting it must be at one sitting. Because think about it if you are a sub threshold, if you are sub threshold of that loose, so it’s a So basically, it’s like a car, you can’t you’ve got to be able to turn the car on, turn it fully all the other amino acids to then lay down skeletal muscle.
Dr. Mindy 22:59
Love it. Yeah, good analogy, who
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 23:01
if you were to drink a protein shake over a period of time, you would never reach that level in the blood needed to trigger skeletal muscle. When you’re young, you can do it when you’re young. And and you know when I say young, really, if you’re growing, because when you are young, you were driven by hormones, growth hormones, things of this nature as you age and you’ve stopped growing higher. You grow wider. Yes, yeah. Yeah. And it’s so it’s really interesting, because there’s this big argument our animal proteins and plant proteins equal? Well, they’re equal as it relates to do they all have amino acids? Yes. But do they have the correct amino acids in the correct amounts? Well, that would take some navigating typically. And this makes logical sense. When you think about skeletal muscle, right? skeletal muscle needs, like meat like feeds, like for example, beef is made of Scott right. So the skeletal muscle of beef feeds. Skeletal muscle of human Yep, you amino acid profiles are nearly the same. And in essence, it makes the correct amount of proteins needed for that plant make the correct amount of proteins,
Dr. Mindy 24:16
plants. Right. And we are not plants.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 24:21
Now. Some are not No. I was trying to make really bad mom joke, but that didn’t happen.
Dr. Mindy 24:28
It’s all good. Okay, so what I’m hearing and I just want to like, bring it down to as simple of a concept as possible is that if I’m a vegetarian or a vegan, and I’m in my 20s that might not be as detrimental to my health as if I’m 50 or 60.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 24:47
Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. And the other way to stimulate skeletal muscle is through exercise, right? You can make up for a lower protein amount if you’re vegan or vegetarian. Then by training, you can protect that skeletal muscle. But you’re absolutely right when you’re I was vegetarian.
Dr. Mindy 25:06
I was too. I was too in my 20s. Yeah.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 25:09
So I was vegetarian. I was actually macrobiotic and a point out. Yeah, I was really all in
Dr. Mindy 25:15
impressive.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 25:17
I was quite impressed. But you can navigate that. And there Listen, and we can talk about dietary strategies. I don’t want to, you know, really put off Egan’s or vegetarians because the reality is, can you get everything you need? Yes, you can, you have to supplement wisely, whether it’s with branched chain amino acids, you know, b 12, you know, iron, there’s all kinds of things that you could supplement with, right? Make that lifestyle work, it just takes a lot of thought. Right,
Dr. Mindy 25:43
right. And that’s what that was going to be my next question. You know, part of why I decided to go vegetarian, I was vegetarian in my 20s pretty much my whole 20s was because of john Robbins book diet for a new America. And I read that and I was like, Okay, I’m gonna do my environmental thing. It’s better for me to not eat meat. I, for 10 years, I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now. I was got chronic fatigue syndrome. I like really, but I didn’t do good vegetarian. Right. So, um, you know, how do we rectify the humanity part of this?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 26:19
In terms of the emotional part of Yeah,
Dr. Mindy 26:23
I don’t want to eat me. I don’t what if I don’t want you like, it’s just hard. It’s an animal and there’s compassion. And, you know, if I’m Buddhist, I have like a Buddhist philosophy, like, it’s really hard to think about hurting an animal.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 26:36
It is, it is. And I think that the only thing that I can say is at some point, the conversation then becomes Are you willing to give up your health for theirs? Yeah. You mentioned later on in life in your 50s and 60s, if you are plant based in your 50s and 60s, the majority of people it will be detrimental for majority of people, I will tell you, I I was telling you before we got on is I still have a I still see patients in clinic, I have a concierge medical practice. And the vegan and vegetarians for the most part, and I don’t have many in my practice. But over my 15 years of practice, I have seen some, they tend to be the ones with the lowest bone density, the ones with the most nutrient deficiencies, a lot of cavity issues, a lot of hair issues. But that being said, you can still supplement wisely for those individuals. Yep. And I’m gonna mention one more thing. I would say about 2% of the population really thrive on a vegan and vegetarian diet.
Dr. Mindy 27:40
Yeah, I’ve seen some people, a yoga instructors, one of them.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 27:44
So this is where the new data comes out. And I think I really enjoy what you said, Mindy before was that you have to come from a big perspective. And I can certainly as a protein expert, I certainly cannot argue that I have seen vegan and vegetarian individuals thrive. Yeah. And it’s really important to be open minded. What I think we’re going to see is those that eat a more vegan vegetarian diet, have a different kind of microbiome, and this microbiome become similar to a ruminant, and they actually can make their own amino acids. Oh, that is mind blowing. And this changes absolutely everything about what we know. And what we think, is that the majority of individuals know, but is there some emerging data? In rodents, there’s a recent paper in nature that had come out. Dr. Don layman was one of those individuals on that study, where we are seeing that humans or that rodents, you know, as a proof of concept can make essential, it’s possible that they may be able to make us crazy,
Dr. Mindy 28:46
crazy. Okay, so now let me ask you this question. This is something that I’ve analyzed, because I really do like my heart is with the vegetarians, like I get that part. I see people like my yoga instructor who just is thriving with it with a vegetarian diet. And one of the things that I’ve noticed is many of the people that thrive with a vegetarian diet are blood type A. And if you go back and you look at the old theory of the blood type diet, do you think blood type would have anything to do with it? And is how’s our blood type and our microbiome connected? I have not studied that. I
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 29:24
think it’s really I was actually looking at it’s so wild that you say that I was literally looking at the data yesterday for blood typing. Hmm. And the data actually doesn’t support evidence of its efficacy. Interesting. Which is really interesting, because makes consciously. I was reading up about there. There’s an allergy to meat from the Lone Star tick. Have you heard of that? No. Yeah, there I have a patient with it that actually has an allergy to red meat and he was bitten by a lone star tick. And I think as any good clinician, we do literature search, and we’re just like, how is that possible, and it’s real. And anyway, I was thinking, are those individuals with Lyme? Do they have a particular blood type? Because Is there something that is provoked that some people get sick and some people don’t? That’s a really long story for saying that I was just looking to literature for blood typing. And again, there’s no evidence to suggest that it actually works. So perhaps the individuals that do better on the vegan vegetarian diet, like your yoga instructor, do so because their microbiome is more suited to that, which,
Dr. Mindy 30:30
which is a key idea behind why we cannot point fingers at each other because we all have different microbiomes. So if you know I look at my yoga instructor, and I’m like, Good on you like, it’s great that it works for you. I wish it had worked for me. It didn’t work. For me eating more meat works better for me. And the microbiome is a great explanation. I love that.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 30:56
And we can’t argue that these numbers I mean, we know that two and a half grams of leucine stimulate skeletal muscle, we know these are the we know that there are certain high quality proteins that are required in a certain amount to stimulate skeletal muscle. Yeah, there is no argument about that. And it’s very interesting when you see the group’s the carnivores. And it doesn’t mean that a fully carnivore diet is the right diet, there’s something to be said for phytonutrients, there’s something to be said for fiber, there’s a lot of support for fiber, I think it goes back to what you’re ultimately saying, Mindy is that we do have bio individual natures. And there are things in science that we know to be true and can be proven over and over and over again. Yeah, we know that protein is very important for skeletal muscle, we know that a certain amount stimulates it. So for example, if you are going to be fasting, you are going to want to target just for practical application, a minimum of 30 grams, so it’s going to be way too low. If you are targeting if you are fasting for long periods of time, you’re going to want to hit anywhere from 40 to 55 grams of protein per meal. If you’re having two meals a day. It’s what I call protein pulsing, I have a plan that I do Protein Protein pulsing where that first meal and that last meal are very high in protein. Yeah, because you’re relating skeletal muscle at that in that way.
Dr. Mindy 32:18
Yeah. And I want to get it makes sense. And I actually know, I feel like I’ve got all these questions on different science that I saw. So I want to get into the protein pulsing and cycling in it for a moment. Here’s a question before we leave the microbiome issue. So the way that I had always been taught about the microbiome is that plants feed are good bacteria. And then when I dove into understanding why the carnivore diet was working so well, for people with autoimmune issues, I started to see that bacteroides, which is prep, it can be easily fed by collagen in meat actually does better you can feed that set of bacteria better with a with a collagen rich steak, then you can with a salad. Is that correct? like are we feeding certain bacteria better with meat than we do with plants?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 33:12
I think that that is definitely a possibility. I think that’s a really good insight. And likely, it would make sense that you would feed different bacteria differently depending on the substrate that you’re using. Absolutely. With auto immune, I’ve thought about this quite a bit. Foods. It’s interesting. So once your auto once your immune system is up regulated, it seems to be very reactive, regardless of what kind of plant you’re eating. It just seems to be very reactive. You’re absolutely right. Individuals that go carnivore, I have seen clinically, inflammatory markers go down, they rheumatoid factors go down. Is it because they are now calorie controlled? Maybe but I think it’s more likely that whatever is up regulating their immune system, they’re no longer exposed to.
Dr. Mindy 34:03
Yeah, I have you also seen that the carnivore diet will up regulate t regulatory cells and calm that immune system down. I saw a study on that as well.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 34:14
I haven’t seen it, but I would love to I would love I’ll find it
Dr. Mindy 34:17
and send it to you because that was that was interesting as well. How do you decide which fast to do? This is a very common question that I get pretty much on a weekly basis. And it really depends on what you’re trying to do with your health. And so I really strongly feel that there are six facets that will really benefit the human body. And they’re all based off of research and they’re all based off of time. And once you understand these six fasts, it’s really fun to varying them and go in and out of different types of fasts. So what I’ve done to make fasting much easier for you guys is I have a free giveaway. It’s a fast team cheat sheet and if you just go Go into the show notes, you’ll see there’s a link there, just click on the link, and it’ll send you to the fasting cheat sheet. And here’s what I want you to know in that cheat sheet. Actually, other than great bullet point information that will like help you to dial in your fast really quickly. I’ve included some new information from a fasting book that will come out in 2022 for women. And so it’s got some really unique information, but also really clear guidelines for you to follow so that you thrive with your fasting lifestyle. So that’s my fasting cheat sheet. And it’s free to you guys just go into the show notes, you can click on the link, and you’ll be able to access it. And as always, I hope it changes your life and moves your health forward. The other thing again, before we leave the microbiome because the microbiome maybe
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 35:51
that listen many maybe there’ll be a part two of this interview there might be I feel like I didn’t
Dr. Mindy 35:55
know I had so many questions for you. I this is so exciting, is that so I learned this from actually Dr. Zack bush and my conversations with him that we look at the Firmicutes versus bacteroides ratio. And when Firmicutes are really high and bacteroides or low, you are going to store calories more so you can take two individuals and feed them the same amount of food, same amount of calories. If I have more Firmicutes than you I’m going to stored as fat more. So we’ve got to bring bacteroides up. And eating meat is one of those ways we can bring bacteroides up when we eat plants when we eat Standard American Diet when we’re on antibiotics, routine antibiotics, we bring Firmicutes up, have you heard that
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 36:38
I have I have what I like to also point out that there are other things that happen when you eat proteins. So it increased the thermal effect of feeding increases the you know, it takes more energy to dispose of the nitrogen in protein,
Dr. Mindy 36:55
or other so you’re literally like raising your metabolism.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 36:58
Yes, yes, that’s exactly what you’re doing. Okay. There are other factors, we would just have to really think about, I mean, the data for protein you’re talking 30 plus years. Yeah, yeah, there’s a ton of good data that says prioritizing protein is fantastic. I you know, I’m biased. So I’m very careful about the words that I use. I’m very aware of my own biases that I’ve, you know, studied this for two decades. And certainly, this is what I believe to be the key to health. And it’s totally misunderstood.
Dr. Mindy 37:30
Yeah, I love this. So and I agree, I think I also want to create a world where all beliefs can can unify. So okay, let’s go into the amount and then I want to go into the type. So some of the studies that I have seen is not only the amount but how often you’re eating so in the fasting world, we focus a lot on stimulating a toffee G, but then on the other end of that is mTOR. So we what the research I’ve seen is with protein cycling, 20 to 30 grams every couple of hours is the best way to stimulate mTOR. So if you have a day of a toughie, G and you follow that with some protein cycling, and you’re alternating in and out of that, that to me seems like the most logical way to build strong lean muscle. Okay, what do you read I already
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 38:24
the concept of stimulating mtorr is very important. Regarding the data, we don’t actually know how long so let me let me back up for your listeners. mtorr is mechanistic target of rapamycin, and M toward this complex exists in every single cell in the body, right so it exists in the skeletal muscle and in the skeletal muscle. mTOR is exquisitely sensitive to amino acids. The liver and pancreas have mtorr in them and they are more sensitive to carbohydrates and insulin. The brain has m torso it is just a growth not initiator but it is a growth propagator, right so it is not an initiation because the reason I say this is individuales we’ll say well, protein stimulates mtorr therefore it stimulates cancer. The data does not support that that is absolutely not true. mtorr is actually stimulated in the body by different substrates, not just protein. Okay. This is another example of a narrative gone wrong. I’m waiting for people to understand. m Torre is an all cells are m tour is essential. You want to trigger m torn skeletal muscle, the way in which you do that is through amino acids, okay. 20 grams of amino acids is sub threshold that will not stimulate mtorr depending on your age. Okay must increase that The older you get in order to stimulate mTOR, you must hit a minimum of 30 grams at one sitting at one sitting. And how many? How many times throughout the day? Great question. We know that it takes, this is more of extrapolated data between four and five hours for the system to reset. So for example, if you were to do small posts, post meals of mtorr, I would not recommend that, okay, you not want to overstimulate mtorr not because of M torn skeletal muscle, but because of mtorr in liver, pancreas, in other parts of the body, you don’t want to continuously stimulate it.
Dr. Mindy 40:40
Okay? It’s a growth propagator, right?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 40:44
When you think about how many times you want to stimulate mTOR throughout the day, one must think about what is their goal? Is their goal number one weight loss is their goal body composition. And essentially by body composition, I mean, increasing skeletal muscle. And to your point, is it a tapa G, right. So if and I would argue that it would be very difficult to be in a state of a tapa G. And you know, I’m just guessing here. And in the state of building muscle, those things would those things would they don’t make sense to go together? No, they don’t. If you now again, the other way to stimulate them tour is high carbohydrates, smaller meals throughout the day. Not a good plan. Right? You don’t want to overstimulate this complex. That being said, we believe that it becomes stimulated and it takes four to five hours to reset so that the soonest that you would want to eat another meal would be between four and five hours.
Dr. Mindy 41:50
Interesting. Okay, so let’s now let’s look at if we’ve compressed our eating window. So like one of my favorite studies, right now that I’ve been geeking out on is if we take a high fat high sugar diet, and we compress it in a 10 hour eating window, that there appears to be this metabolic immunity, like you don’t tend to have the damage that a high fat high sugar diet will create if you compress it into 10 hours. So let’s just apply that to all food. So I’m going 14 hours of fasting, I’m doing 10 hours, I eat, I break my fast with protein, I do 30 grams, I hit that threshold. Right now what I’m hearing you say is just don’t eat for another four to five hours, and you can meet
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 42:36
that. So within that compressed window, you could easily feed if you needed to, you could feed three times.
Dr. Mindy 42:42
Yeah, because you’re in 10 hours. Yeah,
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 42:45
the 10 hours. You could it doesn’t I mean, this is, you know, you’re going 14 hours without eating. Right. So therefore, you’re not stimulate, you know, more than 50% of the day, you’re not stimulating mTOR. Right, right, you could easily do, I definitely don’t recommend one meal of the day, or one meal a day. And then of course, depends on your age. If you’re young, I don’t care. You could do whatever you want. Right, right. gratulations hormones are the route for you. Nobody cares. 1500 Okay. But for the rest of us who are not in our 20s, then we have to be very strategic and how we’re managing our foods. Can you do one meal a day? Yes. Do you want to do one meal a day every day? If you do that, and you’re up against anabolic resistance, then over the course of your life, you will lose skeletal muscle. When you are young, it doesn’t matter. You can build it back as you go through perimenopause. Yep. As you go through Andrew, pause. I want to include the men here. Yeah, well said muscle becomes very difficult to maintain. And yeah, this is the moment you’ve got to be very strategic. I think fasting is a great way to control calories. I think it’s a great way to entrain your circadian rhythm. We know that food does stimulate the circadian rhythm. I haven’t seen the particular study that you are talking about but I have looked at multiple studies as it relates to compressing feeding windows and one of the things that it allows for is it certainly allows for calorie control. Right and, and that, you know, is essential also clinically, it allows for bowel rest. I have vigils that have chronic gi issues go through periods of fasting and a lot of I mean of course you have to take care of the underlying pathology but it certainly does alleviate the bowel and you know, it gives your stomach gives your digestive tract
Dr. Mindy 44:39
arrest. Yeah, yeah. And what I really advocate for is fasting variation with all these things, because anything done the same way over and over again is never gonna be good. How How many, so I’m a 52 year old woman, how much protein Do I need in a day I really resonate as I moved through menopause. I could Build Muscle like nobody’s business in my, you know, 30s and 20s. And once I hit 40s Oh my gosh, it started to break down. So how much protein would I need?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 45:10
Well, what is your target weight?
Dr. Mindy 45:13
Gosh, you know, I haven’t weighed myself in years, but I’m somewhere between 125 130 is about where I
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 45:20
typically like and do you like to be that way? Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah. For you, I would say at the high end, you could easily hit 130 grams, and you do need that much. You don’t need that much per day. I would say that if you are looking to lose body fat, I prioritize Protein Protein forward is really the way to go. Again, because of your age. I’m assuming you’re not menstruating. Maybe you are, but I’m assuming that I’m
Dr. Mindy 45:47
in that gray area. I never know. It depends what day it is. Okay, what month it is, but it’s been several months now.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 45:53
Okay. So you’re kind of in that perimenopausal timeframe. This is the time where sarcopenia relapses is not this Yes, this time, we’re skeletal muscle and anabolic resistance really happens. testosterone levels change. Estrogen actually does play a part in skeletal muscle, this changes, thyroid, all of these things change, which actually make it harder to maintain and build muscle. So for you, because of your specific needs, I would say put you at the higher end, I would say if you wanted to 130 grams of protein would be absolutely suitable. People say Wow, that’s really high. Now the next question I would ask you is how many times are you eating?
Dr. Mindy 46:37
I eat any pretty much like twice a day, I you know, I’ll break my fast at noon, two o’clock. And then once I open up my eating window, I’ll eat twice a day. And when I eat, I eat like I’m not. I didn’t count calories or anything.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 46:53
Well, I think that we should try this. I think we should really increase your protein. And I would say if you’re doing two meals a day, maybe we shoot for 5560 grams per meal, I doubt you’ll be able to eat that much. I would be happy if you hit 55 grams because now you’ve maxed out muscle protein synthesis. Yeah, this would be a strategy to max out that system. We I eat
Dr. Mindy 47:13
a lot of like I proteins kind of my goes to my In fact, my kids, they joke. They’re like, are we having steak again tonight? We like we have big steaks. I mean, we’re really and I want to talk about organ meats and things like that as well. So I’m a huge protein fan. And this is I’m a recovering vegetarian. So I just want to point
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 47:30
that out for me to retail. So
Dr. Mindy 47:33
I’m okay, so if I eat in relation to my glucose levels, so talk about that. Because when I first started using a CGM, when I ate protein, my blood sugar would spike. Recently, this year in January, I wore one for the whole month every time I had a big steak. I don’t know how many grams it was, but I’m going to say 40 grams. My, my glucose went down. Yeah. Why?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 48:01
Okay. This is a great question.
Dr. Mindy 48:05
I’ve been dying to have somebody answer it for me. So this is awesome
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 48:09
if protein actually does cause an insulin spike, but it is a phase one insulin release, meaning what is already in the pancreas is released, it is a bait, there’s typically with carbohydrates, there’s a two phase response, the release of insulin, and then the generation of more insulin to bring down blood sugar. Okay? When you eat protein, protein does cause an initial insulin release. And the thought is, is this helps stimulate muscle. Right? So mtorr insulin is one of the things that that stimulates muscle. So you will see a spike in insulin. Okay, as it relates to glucose, for every 100 grams of protein that you eat 60 grams through gluconeogenesis of carbohydrates is created. Okay, every 100 grams, you’ll get roughly 60 grams of carbohydrates and protein. Wow. Okay. Now, if you are a protein forward eater, for all my carnivores out there, you become very good at generating your own glucose. What you typically and you’ll do this through the liver, and what you will typically see clinically, is your blood sugar will actually remain a little bit higher over a 24 hour period of time, because your body is generating its own glucose, rather than you eating carbohydrates and having an ebb and flow. Okay. As I said, Yes, it’s good because you are doing what the body is designed to do. Okay, he’s maintaining blood glucose, and we’re not talking about high levels of blood glucose, but insulin levels will be low. So the home IR will be low, okay, insulin resistance will be low. If I’m looking at blood, you know, I’ll see, you know, if you’re thinking about how much you know, if you look at the markers of insulin, typically it’s you know, you look at five, you know, five, or you wouldn’t want it being over five typically see two and a half, because you’re not requiring extra insulin not not requiring robust insulin, because your body is actually, you know, number one, while protein causes a phase one insulin release, it doesn’t cause a phase two, and if you ate 100 grams of carbohydrates, versus 100 grams of protein, the insulin response would be totally different. Yeah. And the blood sugar response would be totally different. Yeah. Now the fact that you eat a steak and you get a little hypoglycemic postprandial Heiko? hyperglycemia. I think that’s interesting. Do I know why? I’m not totally sure, unless your nutrition at that meal is unbalanced, where your blood glucose is dipping? Or you’re spiking your glucose too high, and then you’re getting a secondary drop?
Dr. Mindy 51:01
Yeah, but I don’t I don’t feel hypoglycemic. And the actually the neutral sense, people said, Oh, that can be just this is was their responses, it’s efficiency of being able to break down those macronutrients. So I didn’t think of it as a bad thing. I just more thought of it as Oh, that’s interesting. I’ve never seen that for myself before. So yeah, I’ll do it again. Now I’ll let you know. Yeah, okay, idea behind. If I eat meat, my cholesterol is going up.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 51:31
Totally not real. Okay. Your body, dietary cholesterol doesn’t impact for the most part blood level cholesterol that has been disproven for years and years. In fact, they took it out of the guidelines. They took it out of the Dietary Guidelines, it doesn’t even exists in there anymore, but it’s an old narrative, the body will make its own cholesterol. Okay, well, you know, you have a natural setpoint. When you see triglycerides go up, it’s perhaps excess carbohydrates. So that will definitely make an impact. And if you are a hyper responder I was just talking to, we have a cardiologist in my practice Dr. Michael Twyman, who everyone should follow, you should bring him on. He’s amazing. And when you have excess LDL, is it possible that it’s familial, and then those individuals should not really be on a very high fat diet? You know, there’s a lot of controversy about LDL and particles. But when you speak to a cardiologist who is in practice, you have to risk stratify. He says, you know, if you look at their lipid profile, and you know that they’re a hyper responder, and they have a calcium score, you know, that is elevated. This is someone who should be very careful about their LDL. So it does matter. Despite the narrative that we’re hearing. It doesn’t. It does. And these are guys in practice for a very long time.
Dr. Mindy 52:49
Yeah. This is why there’s no one size fits all diet plan. Your
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 52:53
opposite. You’re absolutely right. And I and I caution people, because for the average person with no cardiovascular history, and no issues with their LDL, they could probably excess count. I mean, could they excess calories? No, but they could certainly a high fat diet and be okay. But if you are an individual who happens to be a hyper responder, you probably shouldn’t. Right, right. So
Dr. Mindy 53:17
interesting. Okay, so if I want to eat a steak every night, I’m going to be okay. Okay. And now,
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 53:25
there’s never been evidence to suggest that eating red meat is a problem. And that’s the evidence doesn’t support it.
Dr. Mindy 53:32
Mind blowing. For some of the people listening to this, I like
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 53:35
to point them to the IR committee, and this is a committee that that determined A long time ago, that beef was a carcinogen red meat was a carcinogen, the IR committee and then what they didn’t disclose was when they made these claims, and they made these recommendations is that they looked at the data sets, and they threw out all the high quality randomized control trials. They said, Oh, these trials are too small, I’m gonna throw them out. But anyone in research knows that randomized controlled trials. That’s the pinnacle of evidence. Yep. The IR committee who actually what they also didn’t tell you is largely vegetarian, went in there with a bias throughout all the high quality evidence, took epidemiology data, which is data that’s just collect a collected observational data, and took that and analyze that. Yeah. So one of the committee members actually started to speak out about it. His name is David florafelt. And they should your listeners, you should I will send you the study, or I’ll send you some of the commentary about it. When you read it, you realize that, you know, it was a narrative. The evidence doesn’t ever support the data doesn’t ever support red meat and cancer. The next thing someone needs to answer is what is the mechanism of action? What mechanism of action and what kind of cancer? These are all things that we have to ask?
Dr. Mindy 54:55
Yeah. So you know, not to get political here, but when our president comes out, and we have a worldwide audience and says, everybody needs to go plant base and we’re in the middle of a pandemic. What is that doing to our immune systems right now
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 55:10
the worst piece of advice I could ever give someone, and that is, frankly, the truth is the worst piece of advice I could ever give someone. Yeah, I would agree how I mean, number one, you know, high quality nutrients that are bioavailable come from me, you know, and it’s not even, I don’t care if an individual’s vegetarian or, you know, carnavon I don’t care. I’m a clinician, I have spent 17 years in education, right? I don’t care, whatever a patient wants to do. My job is to help support them. Right? Yeah, idea that you would make a recommendation and say that individuals should go plant base. I’ve been at the other end of that. Yeah. This will destroy people’s health. It will destroy people’s health. It will make them weak. You cannot support skeletal muscle in the same way. What about B vitamins, iron, selenium, zinc? I mean, yeah, bioavailable nutrients. What about the other things like carnitine and creatine? Yeah. And then
Dr. Mindy 56:04
not even? Yeah. Not even mentioned the blood sugar of what what?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 56:08
Oh, my God. Yeah, just say you want Alzheimers? That’s the best way to do it. Yeah, yeah, that’s crazy. screw yourself up metabolically, don’t control your blood sugar. Yeah, you know, and if you’re going to be plant based, the chances are that I mean, the people in your group are going to be likely very wise and they’re not going to be overweight or into fasting. They’re probably plant based for reasons that may be more emotional, or whatever it is. But the majority, if you’re going to try to reach those thresholds of amino acids, the amount of calories you’re going to consume is going to be astronomical. When you know carbohydrates are at a threshold, people have to understand that the way in which you eat carbohydrates are a meal threshold. Yep. When you are talking about insulin, it’s very fascinating to me that we talk about carbohydrates as how many grams per day it’s not a gram per day deal. It is a meal per meal tolerance.
Dr. Mindy 57:00
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I agree. So okay, and I can chat with you about protein all day long so but I have one other major question which is are all in is all animal protein equal? I’ll tell you what, what here we’re on a Friday tomorrow night I actually am going to be grilling chicken hearts we bought at the farmers market I’m trying to experiment a little bit more with some of the organ meats so if do I want to eat chicken? Do I get a different nutrient amino acid profile than beef and what happens when I eat heart or have liver patay How does that all play
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 57:35
out? I’ll be over at your house for dinner and your family you have a recipe for me now I’m hands down the worst cook
Dr. Mindy 57:44
Okay, I’ll let you know what I find what might use the air
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 57:47
fryer and some liver go
Dr. Mindy 57:49
Okay, we’re gonna do it on the Big Green Egg so we got a whole plan around it guys are
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 57:53
you know very high tech I’m not like that. The question is our number one proteins across species the same and I would say if they are gravity bearing, if they have four legs and they walk or if they are chicken and the gravity bearing, then they have seven grams of protein per one ounce you can arguably say that and be confident that you know whether it’s six or seven grams of protein is roughly that fish because it swims not gravity bearing is a little bit lower, and that has about five grams of protein per one ounce. Okay, now we move to organ meats. organ meats are actually different as it relates to their amino acid profile and it makes sense because it’s not skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is what’s very high in the essential amino acids as a relates to liver I don’t actually know how much leucine is in four ounces of liver but I can tell you that it’s going to be different than skeletal muscle
Dr. Mindy 58:55
interesting so the reason to would it be more or less do you think would be less it would be less okay so but now you said this earlier that like we’ll feed like so my thought when I’m looking at all the different organs I could have bought from this rancher was okay well let me get some heart I haven’t I haven’t I don’t know if I’ve been feeding my heart the right you know nutrient profile we got liver so we’re going to try to make some liver patay we’ve got bone marrow we did that last week. So each one of these I can just pretty much go heart’s going to treat heart liver is going to treat liver bone marrow will support healthy bones
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 59:34
is that totally true? I think I think that a lot of that is true I don’t know you know, bones are made from protein primarily. I don’t know if the fat and bone marrow is going to support that I you know, I certainly can’t say that for sure. But there’s co q 10. And heart we definitely know that that supports cardiac function function. Liver liver does wonders things for nearly every Part of the body I mean, every part of the body is being a little dramatic, but fat soluble vitamins. You can’t go wrong with liver in general. Right? Yeah.
Dr. Mindy 1:00:08
It’s just getting it. stomaching
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:00:12
Oh my gosh. Which I mean, that’s what we tried to feed our son is his first food. What is so Yeah, I know. How did he do? What did he do? I’m like, please do not projectile vomit because Aries our daughter was great with it. Leo just cannot be bothered, but oh my god, I love their names. I’m sorry. Yeah, so we have Aries hunter and Leah. neatest. Leah ninus Michael.
Dr. Mindy 1:00:34
Oh my gosh, I did they were they named for their astrological side.
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:00:38
No, wow. No.
Dr. Mindy 1:00:40
I love names Mike. My daughter’s my firstborn. Her name is Bodhi, which is a tree the Buddha meditated under and became enlightened. Hey, yeah, and my son’s name is Paxton which packs we call them packs means you know, peace. So we were really intentional with names as well. So I love that
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:00:59
I was telling you earlier that my husband was in the Navy for a decade. And really that’s kind of where the names little were the names came from. He’s very much a Spartan kind of guy.
Dr. Mindy 1:01:09
I love it a great names like and there’s good strong names. Love that. So okay, well, this was fascinating. I could chat with you. And I definitely want to bring you back on. I’m very curious, just in what we’ve talked about what kind of questions my audience has. So you guys, you know, put it leave us a review with your questions, email us. So that would be back on
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:01:31
talk to your Facebook group, if that’s what you do, if you do that, and I’m happy to definitely do that. It’s really important, you know, because it’s so controversial that this gets lost. And unfortunately, there’s a lot more opinion in this kind of science than there isn’t other kinds of science. Yeah, with that being said, I just want to tell people that as we age, these concepts become non negotiable. Yeah, that’s why it’s so important to understand from just a fundamental level, and I’m happy to be a resource I’m happy to, you know, come together answer any questions, because it’s important to understand.
Dr. Mindy 1:02:10
So okay, my, I have five rapid fire questions. Okay. Some of them don’t have to do with protein. So let’s start off with this one. We’re putting together a book list. We love books, of all of our guests. We want to put your favorite reads. So what book do you feel like everybody should read? And it can be fiction or nonfiction?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:02:28
The relentless is one by Tim Grover. Okay. You really have to understand how you operate and where you want to be operating. Okay. Number two, the upside of stress, which is Kelly McGonigal understanding that stress is not just fight or flight that actually it’s a very good mechanism, its attendant a friend, it can, it can generate the courage response, okay. And the last book, I would say, Hmm, let me think about that. Um, well, what I’m really liking and I and this is a little cerebral and kind of poetic. So it’s, it’s not such an easy read, but it’s David white. And it is, I think it’s called the pilgrimage of work.
Dr. Mindy 1:03:14
Um, oh, I love the name of it. It’s
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:03:16
um, you know, and I’m here it is right here. So I will tell you this, I read all the time, that is probably out crossing the unknown sea, weren’t as a pilgrim pilgrimage of identity. And this really talks about having the courage and he’s so amazing, but it really talks about, you know, that sometimes it takes courage to ultimately be your authentic self, and how that becomes expressed in the world. And really what that takes, because ultimately, I would say, Mindy, and you may agree that initially you may be at war with yourself. Oh, yeah, you’re right. There will always be
Dr. Mindy 1:03:52
a lot of times, right? I don’t even initially daily
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:04:00
and, and, you know, whatever modality and individual uses to ultimately be the highest expression of their self is important for humanity.
Dr. Mindy 1:04:10
Yeah. I love that. Okay, second question. Okay. What’s your favorite protein? What do you like? What’s your go to protein?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:04:16
Beef, beef.
Dr. Mindy 1:04:18
Okay. Beautiful. Okay. What’s the weirdest protein you’ve ever eaten?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:04:23
Oh gosh, this is with Ashley on how do you know her? She’s incredible. Two very dear friend. So it was like pancreas. It was just gross sweetbread? She conned me into it.
Dr. Mindy 1:04:33
Yeah, I won’t be eating that. That sounds bad. Okay, what if you could go back to your 20 year old self? And you could give her advice. What would you give her?
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:04:42
You got it. Keep going. Everything. Just keep going.
Dr. Mindy 1:04:46
I love it. Yeah. Okay. And then my last question. I think I’ll know your answer. But it’s always interesting to hear if you had one message for the world that you could get in everybody’s brain. Yeah, what would it be? Do I
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:04:57
only have one it’s going to be increased. Your dietary protein per meal amount,
Dr. Mindy 1:05:04
you have to be at least 30 grams, at least 30 grams
Dr. Gabrielle Lyon 1:05:07
protein for I mean depends on your age, but come on at least 30 grams, you can nail that per meal, you can understand that high quality protein is essential for the way in which you age.
Dr. Mindy 1:05:16
Hey resetera, I just want to start off by saying thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews. And those of you that have left me comments on iTunes, I just greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and how much you guys are enjoying these episodes. And it seems like you’re enjoying them as much as I am enjoying doing them. One of the things that I’ve learned in just interacting with so many people is that we’ve really lost the art of deep conversations. And for me is the resetter podcast stands for having meaningful conversations with people who are thinking about health, about life about mindset in a way that we may not be getting on social media or in mainstream media. And so I just want to say give you guys a shout out and just say thank you for participating in this process with me. Because as much as I absolutely love delivering the information to you, I love even more knowing that it’s impacting your life. So please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make this podcast more customized to you to make it better. We are now officially in season two. And we are working to bring you the best conversations that health influencers have that mindset changers can give and to really deliver you something that you’re not able to get anywhere else. So from the bottom of my heart, as I always say my YouTube from the bottom of my heart. I am deeply appreciative of you. I am deeply grateful to be on this journey with you and let’s get healthy together.
// RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- Study: Carnivore Diet on T-Regulatory Cells
- Book: The Relentless
- Book: The upside of stress
- Feel the impact of Organifi – use code PELZ for a discount on all products!
- Fasting Cheat Sheet
This was so eye opening! I have a questions about protein and in particular beef metabolism and the microbiome: I have had a gut test from VIOME that recommends lower potions of proteins due to my gut microbiome “protein pathway”. Viome says to avoid grass fed beef!: “Fatty beef contains carnitine that can be used by your microbes to produce TMA, a precursor to TMAO. TMAO is associated with unwanted metabolic and cardiovascular effects. Avoiding fatty beef may improve your Methane Gas Production Pathways and TMA Production Pathways scores. ”
The ZOE Insights program that came with a microbiome gut test recommendations says Beef is a gut suppressor!
At 54 I want to build muscle, the more I learn the more confusing it is.
Fasting cheat sheet
Where do protein powders and collagen powders fit into the “quality protein” amount in a meal? Most protein powders don’t have 30 grams of protein or it they do, is it enough or the right kind to meet the threshold you are talking about for older adults?
I was wondering how Dr. Lyon’s recommendations fit with the Menopause Reset blueprint for ketobiotic diets which limit protein to 50g a day. It seems that the 15 day metabolic reset protocols also limit protein. Don’t we need more to build and maintain muscle, as stated here?