Muscle Is the Key to Longevity (Not Fat Loss) | Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

It's amazing to me how ignored this is in medicine and it's such a critical part of health. We have this epidemic in this country of not only obesity but sarcopenia and you put together a hypothesis which is that maybe it's not that we're overfat, it we're under muscle. From the 70s to roughly early 2000s, muscle wasn't even thought of. Then we started focusing on body fat percentage. Now as we continue to transition, we're looking at biomepedance and now we're beginning to think about overall muscle amount but it doesn't and there. The real important marker is the intramuscular adipus tissue. It's the quality of the muscle tissue. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is a board certified physician with advanced training in nutritional sciences, geriatrics and metabolism from Washington University in St. Louis. She is redefining health and longevity by placing skeletal muscle, the organ of longevity at the center of aging, disease prevention and human performance. So let's get into the protein thing because you know this is a hot topic. Number one, age. The older you are, the more protein you need. Period. Number two, physical activity. The more sedentary you are, the more protein you need. Really? Yes. I think building muscle is probably one of the best ways to lose body fat but also to rectum metabolism, lower inflammation, improve your cognitive function, improve your immunity, help your sexual function. I mean, pretty much everything. More muscle, better sex. Now we have everyone's attention. Yeah, I'm 66 and I've never felt more excited to explore the world and challenge myself in a healthy way right down to myself. This spring, I'm riding my bike across Cuba and to ensure I have the strength and energy to really enjoy all the experience has to offer. I never travel without my timeline powered by my dopure. From decades working with patients, I've learned something important. 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It's built on two clinically researched ingredients, Inoslim and glucose vantage that help your body support healthy glucose metabolism and maintain steady energy all day long. No more carb crashes, no more afternoon fog. Just one daily ritual that keeps your energy consistent and helps you feel strong, focused and resilient. To learn more, head over to bioptimizers.com slash hymen and use promo code hymen during checkout to save 15%. And if you subscribe, not only will you get amazing discounts and free gifts, you will make sure your monthly supply is guaranteed. Gabrielle. Hi Mark. Hi. Welcome. Yeah. So great to see you. Good to see you too. We've been buddies for a decade plus for chatting. I remember you just come to my house and hang out and kind of shadow me and my clinic and see patients with me. And you know, you've kind of taken your whole career and exploded it in this whole field of muscle-centric medicine. And I remember you used to come see me and you're like, Mark, you've got a strength, you've got to train. You've got to train. I'm like, ah, I'd buy a guy to bake that. I'm going to just do yoga. I'm like whatever, whatever. And I always didn't like, I mean, look, I'm a tall skinny guy. So I get intimidated by going to the gym. There's all these guys with big muscles. And I just feel like I'm, I used to do 10 pushups in my chest would hurt for a week. And I'm like, this is for the birds. And even though I know as a doctor that I needed to do it, I didn't really start until I was 59. And it was, I was actually you that got me really going on this. You, you really put a bug in my ear about this and how important it was. It started teaching me about the importance of muscle as this neglected organ. Think about it. Yeah. Where is the muscle specialist in medicine? You've got an neurologist. You got a cardiologist. You got a rheumatologist. You got a gastronologist. Where's the muscleologist? Well, hopefully we're creating a new generation of thinking about it and doctors. Right now, think about it. We have physical medicine and rehab. But that's the movement side. What about the dysfunction that actually happens to skeletal muscle? I mean, skeletal muscle can get Alzheimer's. Skeletal muscle can become dysfunctional from an immune perspective. It is its own organ system. And it's like the huge organ. Like you've got lots of muscles, but it's the biggest organ. It is. It's the largest organ system in the body. And yeah, arguably the most important organ system, of course, depending on whatever your specialty is. We actually just published a paper looking at the importance of muscle mass, strength, and sexual function. More muscle, better sex. That's right. I say. Now we have everyone's attention. I mean, it's amazing to me how ignored this is in medicine. And it's such a critical part of health. And you know, we have this epidemic in this country of not only obesity, but sarcopenia. And you put together a hypothesis, which I find very interesting, which is that maybe it's not that we're overfat. That we're undermuscled. That's exactly right. And that the muscle is the key to health. It's not just losing weight because you lose weight and still be fat. We call that to be fat. That's right. That's right. On the outside, fat on the inside. So you lose tremendous amounts of muscle. I should lose weight as well as fat. And so this is a big problem for people. And then you're having metabolic issues. But you're talking about a way to kind of rethink medicine from the perspective of muscle. Not just as this thing that moves around your limbs and body parts, but it's actually an organ that has all the extraordinary functions that we're just learning about. And then I didn't even know about it and learn about medical school. So kind of take us through like what is muscle? Why is important? What does it do other than just move your bones around? And why should we be focused on it as a key organ of longevity? First of all, skeletal muscle is the largest organ system in the body. Dermatologists and we've always heard that it's skin, but actually skeletal muscle makes up roughly 40% of our body weight. And as you can imagine the health of your tissue for you now, it might be 50 for me, it might be 30. But regardless, it's a large portion of our body. It's the most important organ system that we have because it is the focal point. I'm going to break down as to why that is. So skeletal muscle, by the way, is something that we prime our bodies for when we're young. And it is pliable and it's never too late to build. So before we talk about all the functions, let's just pause. What other organ system do you have direct voluntary control over? You exercise your heart won't get better. But you can't say heart beat 73 beats a minute. And I can't do that. What I can meditate and get it slowed out. But you can say I'm going to contract my bicep or I'm going to contract my quad. It's the only tissue that we have voluntary control over. There's skeletal muscle, there's cardiac muscle in the heart, there's smooth muscle, say in the uterus, but skeletal muscle, we have voluntary control over. Now, what are the other functions of muscle? Obviously for the architecture of our body, the building, the strength, the power, but also from a metabolic perspective. When we think endless and when I was in your clinic, but I would go to your clinic and I would listen to you talk about diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's, these are not diseases that are separate. Many of these diseases are caused by metabolic pathology. And to say that simply, dysregulated glucose, abnormal blood glucose, triglycerides, elevated levels of insulin. So all of these metabolic syndrome, which are actually not caused by that first, they are caused by dysfunctional muscle first. Disfunctional muscle is in part at the root of cardiovascular disease. Alzheimer's, which is typed through diabetes of the brain, type to diabetes, insulin resistant. So just the list goes on. So what does like what is functional muscle and dysfunctional muscle? And before, you know, it's interesting because we're talking somewhat in absolutes, but it's not in absolutes, right? So is the liver, does the liver play a role? Is it fatty muscle? Right? So this is a complicated organ system. And so for the physicians listening, I want to make sure that it's not just comes across as black or white, right? Functional muscle is the following. Typically, muscle quality is defined based on strength, which is a little kind of misleading, right? How many pushups can you do? How strong are you? How fast can you walk? Functional muscle is strong muscle. Disfunctional muscle is weak. Disfunctional muscle looks like a marbled stake over time. You get fat that is infiltrated into muscle tissue. And also, you get a wagyu rib on instead of a filet menu. Yes, and we're going to talk about that in terms of imaging, because I think we're at the precipice of something new, or muscle that is dysfunctional has less mitochondrial efficiency. You and I talk about exercise as mitochondrial medicine, pushing exercise, whether it's resistance training or high intensity interval training, or endurance training, all of this is medicine for your mitochondria. So there is the functional aspect of muscle, strength, power, mobility, balance, then there is the metabolic component. And keeps you active in functioning as you get older. Yes. I noticed that when I started doing string training, I just felt more solid in my body. I felt more stable. And when I was younger, I kind of trained, I jumped from rock to rock. And I noticed I was maybe a little more tentative, but as soon as I started string training, I'm like, oh, my body is like, my core is strong. I can bounce around on my legs. And it was a really interesting phenomenon to notice. Yeah. And also, when you think about what's important for you is how do we get injury prevention? You're an IC patient and we think, okay, well, as we go through life, is there this inevitable decline? And I would say no. And this inevitable decline is we see our parents get thinner or more frail. You know, this is this kind of expected, expected. But really, that's not how aging happens. Aging happens in what we call a catapult crisis model. There are discrete moments of inactivity that decrease muscle mass very rapidly and strength. Now with that, there is this relationship with muscle mass and glucose regulation. So oftentimes as people are losing muscle, their blood sugar goes up, yeah, their insulin goes up. And so now we are at a point where there is metabolic dysfunction, which becomes dangerous because we all know that glucose is toxic to the cells if it remains elevated. I mean, we have a disease for that. It's called hypochytipides. You know, I was thinking about these, these weight lifters. These like power lifters. And these guys are kind of overweight. They got big guts and they're big guys. And you know, our sumo rest sort of like, are these guys, these guys have a lot of muscle? They're trained muscle. And are they, are they metabolic, they healthy? I made a mistake really early on in medicine. And I think what's so cool about medicine and learning is that we can change our opinion. Yeah. And when I was at WashU doing my fellowship in geriatric and nutritional sciences, there was a lot of talk about fit. And fat, I didn't believe it was possible. Yeah, it didn't make sense to me. Yeah, because I was thinking, okay, so there is adipose tissue subcutaneous, a certain body fat percentage of over 30%. Well, how can that be healthy? And you know what I found? Yes, they can. And you know why? It's actually the intramuscular adipose tissue that matters. So let's talk about this. So there's they don't have marbles fat. Correct. And this is where I think the future of medicine is going because we are going to be, you know, in the 70s, we were very focused on the obesity epidemic in the 70s. And it was that the nutrition outpaced our ability to kind of manage that caloric intake. But exercise wasn't even brought into the picture. Do you know why? Because our physical activity didn't change during that time. It was still the same. I mean, it was lower, but it was still the same. So the input, it was input versus output. And people really started focusing in the experts started focusing on overall calorie consumption. Yeah. Find the up until around 2000, muscle came into the picture as a metabolic organ. But from the 70s to roughly early 2000s, muscle wasn't even thought of. But how did this then frame how we currently think? Yeah. Well, there was BMI, which we know body mass index body mass index is just thought of in terms of overall size. Right. There's this, you know, you do this little formula and someone like my husband, who is very muscular, would have a high body mass index, which would mean he's unhealthy. Yeah, you're right. But he looks bad on paper. Exactly. Then we started focusing on body fat percentage. Right. And then after body fat percentage, if you're 30% body fat or more than, you know, you're either overweight or obese. Now as we continue to transition, we're looking at biomepedance. And now we're beginning to think about overall muscle amount, but it doesn't end there. This is just the beginning. The real important marker. And again, we're at the beginning of all this is the intramuscular adipose tissue. It's the quality of the muscle tissue. And where can you see intramuscular fat tissues in on the MRI? MRI. I'm alright. I was talking early on about maybe a year ago, I was talking to Jonathan about this, like co-founder of function and I said, Jonathan, listen, you're doing these early detection screening tests about this is amazing. And then the next iteration is actually going to look at not just body fat percentage and not just muscle mass, but actually the quality of the muscle. Yeah. Well, we now have to function in the imaging, Israel offer intramuscular, which is why I'm so excited about it because I believe that this is the way the future. Yeah. And now it's available to everybody. You don't even need to doctor. You just go to function health.com and sign up. And you'll also see all your metabolic pathways and inflammation and everything else is affecting your muscle. Yes. Yes. And if we were to think about that from the listener or the viewer, that means the simple act of engaging in resistance training improves intramuscular adipose tissue, whether your body fat percentage or muscle mass changes. When you make the choice to exercise and be physically active, you're improving the quality of your tissue in the immediate. And that becomes really empowering. I was interviewing on my podcast one of the world leading experts in PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome. So someone who's listening to this, if they're struggling with fertility, this is the number one cause of infertility in young women. And I said, her name is Dr. Melanie Creish. She's in Colorado. She's the MDPHD and I said, well, what is the body fat percentage where we're seeing all these problems? Because in my mind, as physicians, we think, well, there's a certain cutoff. So for example, we know how much protein someone should have. We know what their blood glucose levels should be. We know or we should know what should their percent body fat be where they have these problems, right? Like we should know that. And she was going to go, Gabrielle, it has nothing to do with body fat percentage as everything to do with the intramuscular adipose tissue. And that really determines how someone responds. If you do a dexascane, you can't tell them. So only the MRI can really help you give this impression. MRI CT or ultrasound, but ultrasound is obviously that would just be one body part. But I say all this to then bring it back to the conversation of GLP ones, obesity and now sarcopenia. I've always said that whole food protein is foundational. It feels your muscles, metabolism, hormones, and even your immune system. But here's the thing, most people still aren't getting enough high quality protein to truly support healthy aging. It's not just about grams, it's about amino acids. The building blocks your body needs to repair and thrive. As we get older, our bodies become less efficient at using them, which is why I rely on perfect amino. It gives all essential amino acids in the exact ratio your body needs for maximum protein synthesis without extra calories. That means it works even during fasting after exercise or anytime your protein needs aren't fully met. Predigested and ready to use, it's especially important as you age or stay active. Meeting your amino acid needs can also help with appetite regulation and metabolic balance, making it easier to stay strong, recover faster, and age well. Go to BodyHealth.com and use code hymen20 for 20% off your first order. Most people hear the word red meat and automatically think of beef. But venison sits in a completely different nutritional category. It's the cleanest, leanest, most nutrient dense red meat available. 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The best source for wild harvest advenison, and the company I get my venison from, is Maui Newi venison. So if you're looking for a protein that supports longevity, metabolic health, and clean eating, venison is one of the smartest choices you can make. The best source for wild harvest advenison, and the company I get mine from, is Maui Newi venison. To learn more about the health benefits of venison and how to get yours, head over to MauiNewiVenison.com slash hymen again. That's M-A-U-I-U-I venison.com slash hymen to learn more. Okay, before we jump on that, I want to just finish summarizing the features of good body muscle, because it's not just that it moves your skull around or it's got less fat. It's actually a metabolic sink for sugar. It actually regulates hormones, it regulates inflammation. You talk about the it's called myocines, which I'd love you to unpack. So help us sort of understand the broad range of functions that's besides just moving around your bones and walking around. That may be this place and why it's so important and why it's so important to have healthy quality muscle. Not just the amount that you look at it. The amount it doesn't matter. It does matter to an extent, but it really is the quality of that tissue. If we were to think about the quality of the tissue from a metabolic perspective, at rest, people don't actually realize this, but at rest, the body muscle primarily burns fatty acids for fuel. So at rest, if you're metabolically healthy, your muscle is burning primarily fatty acids. If your diet is too high in carbohydrates, you can force muscle at rest to then burn and utilize glucose, but this is not ideal. So when we think about, ideally, yes. But you don't want, if we're just sitting here, hanging out at zero percent, VO2 max, we don't want to be burning glucose, we want to be burning fatty acids. That's how it was designed. But if you overwhelm the system, and if you are constantly eating, you know, if the RDA is 130 grams of carbohydrates, which is on average 300 grams of carbohydrates, we are creating an environment that we are forcing muscle to respond to. So number one, at rest, empty muscle, right? So activity allows you to burn muscle glycogen, you use muscle glycogen. That's a storage for the sugar carbs in your muscles. It's about 25 hundred calories. You empty the tank. So if we think about what muscle does, if we think about it as the suitcase, not I don't know about you, but I think you're kind of a heavy packer. Yeah, you're definitely heavy packer. At least you were last time. I saw you. That's where I'm going. I want the list. I got to tell you, when I, when you have your place in Linux, and I remember we were running out, I was going in one direction back to New York City, and you were going on a trip, and you had this massive suitcase, and you know what you're doing, you're putting your supplements in, not even just the little pill case. I mean, the whole bottles were going. And it was absolutely hilarious. Now, why does this matter? If you think about your muscles as suitcase, and let's say you're going on a trip per four days, and you instead of going on a trip per four days, you pack for 14 like Mark and all the supplements in the world. You're stuffing all this stuff in the suitcase, meaning glucose, and you didn't exercise it like clothes, then all that stuff spills out. It has no place to go. And so muscle, it's really important that you do activity to empty the suitcase, of muscle, so that when you eat carbohydrates, you have a place for it to go. Not your belly, but not your belly, but, but the reason I say this is because there's no such thing as a healthy sedentary person. There's no such thing as a healthy sedentary person. So when we are talking about the metabolic role of skeletal muscle, we have to talk about it from an ideal standpoint, which is healthy muscle burns fatty acids at rest. But if we are living in reality, we know that most people are eating way too many refined carbohydrates and grains. We know that most people are eating roughly around 300 grams of carbohydrates, meaning that most people that are also inactive have unhealthy sedentary muscle. And so what does that look like in blood, or if someone goes and gets a function test, what does it look like, or whatever, and it is the following. You have elevated levels of blood glucose. You have elevated levels of triglycerides. So you are now mismatching your nutrition from muscle health, and you have elevated levels of insulin. So there are two sides to the same point. There is muscle that is unhealthy, meaning it's full of muscle glycogen. It has not been turned over. It hasn't been emptied. We get fat that then infiltrates into muscle over time, making muscle itself less effective, both metabolically and from a strength standpoint. So this is totally not ideal. So that's the metabolic part. You can excrete up glucose metabolism. You get more insulin resistance, you get more prediabetes. It's sort of a vicious cycle where you have not enough healthy muscle to actually regulate your metabolic health. But then there's other parts, like the immune part and the hormonal part of muscle. So talk about those. Yeah. And this is also really fascinating with aging because there are changes that seem to happen with muscle as we age. And that is, it becomes more resistant to things like amino acids that stimulate muscle. It becomes, so there are immune cells within skeletal muscle, and those become less robust. Skeletal muscle that is not moved can then become atrophied. And also there's a nerve relationship. So it becomes less responsive. There's a denervation that happens. And all of these things are thought to be as normal parts of aging. Potentially, I don't necessarily agree with because what we see is when you increase activity, like we're talking about resistance training, non-negotiable three days a week, plus some kind of cardiovascular, you can improve skeletal muscle to then respond and look like youthful muscle. And that's that's fascinating at any age. It's so interesting. I went through this horrible catabolic state last year. I came and saw you remember? Yeah, fairly remember. I was so high on narcolepsy. Well, anyway, I did I came and saw you. There was a great music playing. I do remember. And I lost 25 pounds of muscle because I didn't really have any body fat. I was already like a 10 or 12 percent body fat. And so I just lost my skeleton and my muscle. And I was worried. You know, I was 65. I didn't know if I could build it back. I didn't know how my body responded. You know, I know all about this phenomena, bannabolic resistance, which is as you get older, it's hard to build muscle. And you know what? I just doubled down on everything that I knew to do, which was strength training, you know, testosterone therapy, which was made a big difference because of my hormones were just in the tank after this surgery. Yeah. 100, 200 or something. Unbelievable. I had I used creatine. I used I doses of protein. A lot of people say, how we should talk about that. Yeah, so it had like 50 grams for breakfast in a protein way, protein shake. I would put in creatine. I would put in my top here, which is where you're talking about. You're a little bit naive. A molecule that helps build mitochondrial health and reducing inflammation. And I was just deliberate in the gym every day for an hour. And so I couldn't do anything at first. Like it was lay on the floor and weren't actually going to get on the floor. I was laying on a massage table. And I would put a band around my knees and just open my knees back and forth and activate my glutes. That's how like that was enough to then begin to stimulate the tissue. And I just want to say something. I could do like, I could do like 10 pound weights. Now I'm doing like, you know, 50 pound weights. I mean, you're strong. Yeah. And you'd mention myocines, which I think is important. Yeah. And myocines are these proteins that are released from skeletal muscle based on contraction and duration of exercise. Now they were discovered in the 2000s, early 2000s. It co-opened Hagen by an exercise. She's actually an MD who also is an immunologist, really, a penne of penne of penne of penne of penne. There are thousands of different myocines. But what is so interesting is when you contract skeletal muscle and we're just thinking about you had an injury, we'll call it an injury or a catabolic crisis. But when you went to go contract that skeletal muscle, the myocines that released did a number of things. So number one stimulates bone as we know. So it's not just the pulling, but also helps stimulate BDNF in the brain, which is brain-derived neurotropic factor. Also, it secretes in our lukin six, which people always think about as the cytokine storm from macrophages in other cells. But when released from muscle, it helps balance the inflammatory response. And so there's this pleatrophic effect. There's this positive effect when these myocines are released from muscle. They do things we don't even know about. And so that's this idea of exercises medicine. And by being able to dose exercise appropriately, we should be able to get these responses that are beyond just the responses by improving blood flow. So there's the muscle mass and strength. You're on the ground doing your clamshells to try to then stimulate and engage your glutes, which is really important. We know better legs trying means better mobility, better activities daily living, but it also means better cognitive capacity. Yeah, definitely helped. For sure. So really it's such an interesting thing. You've got all these different functions of muscle, most of which you're not putting more. Most of which I certainly never learned about in medical school. Doctors don't know how to assess sarcopenia or loss of muscle. They don't know how to treat it. They don't know the first thing about it. It's kind of amazing to me. And I remember when I worked at Kenya Ranch in the 90s, we had a dexamachine and everybody would get a dexamachine. And I was like, this is really fascinating. And we looked at bone density I received, but we also did body composition. In fact, then nobody was like a body composition. And we were seeing all kinds of interesting things that people didn't know about in terms of where the distribution of fat was, where loss of muscle was, increased body fat. And it was such an incredible tool. But now with the imaging to Ezra, the company that's part of function, we can now get the Fiskid MRI assessments to see where you're at. And then you can track it longitudinally over time to see what your interventions are doing to help. And one of the things that I think you pioneered is this idea of muscle centric medicine. We talked about, and not just sort of at an abstract level, but how do you actually apply this year to life? And your new book, the Forever Strong Playbook, which everybody should get a copy of. And you agree you're going to do the training program. Why don't we start to amount? I am. And we'll do a before and after. Let's just see what happens. If I follow your six week program to my muscle, yes, I'm going to get even more ripped. Okay, but it's also not fair because kind of genetically you're also very lean. But why don't we do that? Why don't we do a body composition assessment before? Yeah. And strength assessment before. And then do this for six weeks and do strength assessment after. And we'll talk about it on my podcast. I love that. And we'll talk about the results from Ezra on my podcast. I love a challenge. And I know you do. So let's not obsess. Like I, I, I honestly had to be honest, I hated spring training. I hated. Do you remember last time I tried to get you to go to the gym? You know what we said we're going to do? You want to go for a bike ride instead? I know. I'm like, I, but now it's like I'm addicted. Well, it's non-negotiable. It's now it's not negotiable. And even if I'm traveling, I'll go to the gym, I'll bring my little bands. If I can't get things, I have, you know, all these different. Let's talk about a few of the, the, the practical strategies that people can do, which is why I wrote this book. Now, there is this concept of progressive overload. Okay. Progressive overload is increasing the amount of weight necessary to get a particular outcome for strength or hypertrophy. We'll just put it all together. But the reality is, it's about progressive stimulus. And the reason I say progressive stimulus is because, again, you are traveling. And there are many people that are listening to this podcast that say, are in parimenopause or menopause. And the last thing that we want them to do is to injure their shoulder, which maybe they've presented with frozen shoulder or injure, listen, you know, I've had a bazillion injuries. The reason I say it's progressive stimulus is if we take a step back, muscle strength outpaces tendon strength. Yeah. And it doesn't mean if you're listening to this and you are new to training, it doesn't mean you just have to lift heavier. Heavy is relative. Yeah. One to two reps in reserve, meaning with good form, there's mechanical failure. And then there's technical failure. Right. You want the muscular failure, the mechanical part. You don't want the, you don't want your form to be all over the place. If you're supposed to do a squad, but you're lifting it with your neck, that's wrong. Right. And so what are some of the foundations of a great strength training program that is non-negotiable and everyone can do? I mean, that's three days a week. It's full body. It's all about how you progress over time. And the progressions could be reps, could be tempo, could be adding more volume. There's all different ways to improve muscle health. That's not just lifting heavier. Well, you say that because I was in a bike accident and limited, but I didn't stop training. A lot of people when they have an injury, they go, well, I'm just going to chill and take this chance to just watch Netflix and lean bet. But I have a broken ankle, a broken foot, kind of banged up pretty bad. And I just was like, I'm not letting this stop me. And I can't lose the progress I've made. And so I'm working with someone who's helping me adapt to it. But I'm also using these things called blood flow. Let's talk about that. And yesterday we were in the gym. And I was doing 10 pounds with these things on. And I'm like, normally I can do like 25, 30 pound curls. And I was like, you know, and so you can do things without hurting your tendons as you older. And the deal with this injury risk and make your risk for injury a lot less. But get as much or more benefit. Blood flow restriction is something that we've been using in our clinical practice forever. And let me just highlight blood flow restriction. Yeah. So blood flow restriction was originally used in rehab. And we use it a lot, a lot of the soldiers use it for rehab for injuries. And what it is is you'll put a cuff on and there's various cuffs. I use a a Bluetooth cuff called saga. Have you ever heard of them? I know. Okay, cots you. So this is that's like a Japanese. That's a very it's a very advanced cuff. And what it does is it occludes the blood flow, meaning it will calibrate to a certain millimeter of mercury. And then it looks like it feels like a blood pressure cuff, but a little bit more robust. Yeah. And what it does is it allows you to train at a fraction of the weight that you would normally train to get the same stimulus. So what does that mean? So you had just said that you do 30 pound curls. You could pick up a five pound weight. Yeah. And it would signal to the body because again, your blood is partially occluded and it sends growth factors. And there's very standardized ways of doing it. Dr. Jeremy Lennyky, who is one of the world leading experts on blood flow restriction. He was on our podcast and he just gave a masterclass in how to use blood flow restriction. Very particular for outcomes. Right. So it's it's not this kind of just haphazard use. It's what percentage are you including? What exercises are you doing? What is the injury that you're trying to work on? And it's it's I you know, obviously I'm not there. You're a guy's as doctor or neither is Mark, but this can be very safe and effective. Yeah. I use it when I tore my hamstring. I still use it. I travel with these blood flow restriction bands when I don't have access to a gym as well. Right. It's just do body weight stuff. And it's just feels like heavy weights. Yes. I mean, I get these incredible pump of my arms. I look, my arms look almost as good as yours after I'm done with my workout. It's extraordinary. And also for more advanced aging people, it's great. And also if you don't have a ton of room, like let's say, you know, your someone is on bedrast or someone is injured by just simply inflating that cuff, even by doing a partial push up or even pushing against the wall. Some kind of muscular movement actually has again, just profound effects from injury and also maintaining muscle and blood flow, which is again, really important. Let's get into kind of the details a little bit because clearly muscle as you laid out is such a neglected and important part of our long term health. You caught the organ of longevity. I agree. I think, you know, if you look at all the things you could do, remember when you're younger, you have a lot of trophic factors and hormones that keep you kind of going. When you get older, those change and you end up, you know, having the, the dwindles we call it in medicine. I never, I, well, wait a second, I never heard of the dwindles. You never heard of that? No. You're a geriatrician. I know, we didn't, we never called it the dwindles. That is definitely not a geriatric reward. That is a marachymin or a slight job. It's like, you know, you slow gradual decline. You dwindle in your ability to function. They've never heard of that either of the producer. Well, anyway, maybe I made it up, but it's something that you kind of notice. And like you said, what we see in our aging population, we think is the never part of getting older, which is this decline in ability and function than doing things. And, and the truth is that that's not inevitable. Now, it takes a lot of more input and work and dedication and diligence. And I want to really get into what does it actually take? Because, you know, people can hear this go, well, I'm not going to go to the gym every day. And I'm like, no, they're not. They're going to hear this and they're going to go, you know, why? This is the new standard because this is more impactful than any medication I could ever take. It really is. I mean, you're losing body fat. It's important. But I, I would argue with the long with you that I think building muscle is, is probably one of the best ways to lose body fat, but also to rectum metabolism, to lower inflammation, improve your cognitive function, to improve your, improve your immunity, of your sexual function. I mean, pretty much everything, you're immune, everything. And also we have a direct mechanism. So one of the things that we have to understand is that, you know, in medicine, we have to ask, okay, so what is the mechanism of action? So for example, muscle mass and sexual function, which we publish with my colleagues at Baylor, we have a direct action. And that is what does muscle do? Muscle, strong muscle improves endothelial function. Okay, improves all vascular health. Strong healthy muscle mass improves NO2, which is Baylor dilation. Strong healthy muscle helps improve metabolic risk factors, helps control blood glucose, helps control fats. And it's under voluntary control. And you had said something that there's also twofold, we just have to become more strategic at the inputs that we put in. Meaning, what does that mean in terms of inputs that are valuable? You know, as we age, you'd point it out, when we're younger, our system, you know, it's this, this idea of mTOR, we've all, people have heard about this, but in your case, protein kinase, it's this growth factor. It's this growth perpetrator. Yeah. And when we think about it, it's in all tissues. So mTOR, and I'll get to why this is even important not to get too caught up in the weeds, but mTOR, which is responsible for muscle protein synthesis, is in all tissues. The signaling of our muscle decreases the efficiency, becomes decreased to inputs like protein. And so when we're young, we're highly anabolic. You know, you've met my son, my little one, he's training for the SEAL teams, he's four. He's highly anabolic. He could have five grams of protein, and it would still stimulate his muscle, because he's growing. He's driven by growth factors in insulin. But when we're done growing, then this input has to change. And this input would then be resistance training, calories, hormones, carbohydrates, and the balance between all of them changes. So we have to get protein. Well, protein is right. The amino acids, and that's probably the most important. The most important is the resistance training input, the mechanical input, and then the protein input. Yeah. Primarily, losing. So let's get into the protein thing, because you know, this is a hot topic. Still. That was the bogeyman, and then carbs are the bogeyman. Now, like a protein is the bogeyman lack, or just protein in general. And yet there's this sort of bias that too much protein is bad for you. We certainly learned out in medical school, that it can stress your kidneys, that you don't need it, that your body weighs it. It turns into calories or energy, turns into glucose if you eat too much. And what you're saying is we need to form a protein than most people think. And that you know, you've got guys like Chris Gardner, who I know well, they respect him. He's a he's a opstand for scientists, but he's very, very strong in his opinion, that we don't really need that much protein, that you know, you can get all the protein you need from like grass. And I think that there's some challenges with that. And I think he especially as you get older, there's challenges with that. I think the RDA, which is the recommended diet your allowance, was designed for preventing deficiency diseases, like protein malnutrition, not necessarily optimal health. So when people talk about point eight, grams per kilo, protein per day, which is, you know, 0.37 grams per pound, which is a, you know, a third, basically a third of a gram per pound. It's really so you don't get a disease. It's not for optimal health or muscle building, or it doesn't even adapt to what you need as you get older. So how do you, how do you help people understand the right frame for protein about what we need when we need what? How to eat it when to eat it? How do you my favorite question, aside from one on my kids? Now, I want to just touch on Gardner and the episode that he did with Andrew Huberman, because we did a response video to that with Dr. Donald Layman, who is one of the world leading protein researchers, who's trained me for over 20 years. And the other thing I noticed, I did a debate with Chris Gardner on the dire CEO, and they haven't published it because it's so, it was no country. I would really encourage people, and I will send it to you. I would really encourage people to listen to that episode with Don Layman. Again, Don is not out in your podcast. It is on the podcast, and I will send you a link. You're podcast is the Gabrielle Lion podcast. We're going to show you. But I am going to send it to you because it addresses each statement that because again, you know, it's fascinating to think that how we are communicating science now is like this, which is incredibly valuable. You and I are sitting down and we are talking. But you and I have both been in medicine for a long time, arguably you more than one room in me. Thank God. I got a few more miles on that. You and I know that we would sit down and there would be grand round. And then there would be, you know, for me, it would be like experimental biology where you have these world leading experts have discussions and they would come together. And I just say that because typically science is not debated on platform. So for example, we would take a look at this study and we would say, okay, this is to sort of sequester to the halls of academia, not in public forum, which is now where what's happening, which I don't think is bad thing. I think it's a good thing. And it is, but it creates a lot of confusion. It does. For example, Chris Gardner talking about how we're getting too much protein, you know, his, many of his fundamental statements were incorrect. And so put that aside and encourage people to listen to that. Let's talk about where we are in terms of protein and where that information came from. Now in the 70s, early 70s, there was the McGovern Committee, which then informed the dietary guidelines. That's right. The McGovern Committee was written. Do you know who was written by? I think I do. A staff writer in the early 30s that had an economic degree. This person wrote the documents that then informed the dietary guidelines, which arguably we have barely changed. Yeah. And they were actually better when they were just came out. And then the industry got involved. They made them change a lot of things because they were basically talking about eating less starches and carbohydrates. But then actually they made them change it. For whatever, but we just have to understand that nutrition is an interesting aspect of medicine because it's not like endocrinology or not like gerontology. Nutrition has a lot of inputs from food supplier, from industry, from Paulton. Okay. So this then changes and informs the public. So the dietary guidelines have a list of recommendations. For example, it's 10% saturated fat. Anything more than 10% saturated fat is considered unhealthy. But let's just frame this out appropriately. And then the protein recommendation is 0.8 grams per kg. Then the carbohydrate recommendation is 130 grams of carbohydrates per day. Now let's look at just the fat component. By making 10% saturated fat or more unhealthy, that weaponizes food for almost all animal-based foods. For example, an egg, one single egg that has a total of 6 grams of protein has, I don't know, a 16% saturated fat, maybe it has like half a gram, right? 6 grams of fat, there's tons of high quality protein, choline, fat soluble vitamins, knee vitamins. But because it has a food has 16% saturated fat, now this is considered unhealthy. Let's take one more example. If my husband who runs marathons is eating 4,000 calories a day, his saturated fat intake can be 44 grams. Because of the 10% because of the dietary guidelines, which we're going to circle back to protein, because obviously protein is the most essential and important macronutrient in the world. The most important. But people don't realize this, but there is the only macronutrient we need in large volumes. So we need no carbohydrates or essential. And only for rounds of essential acids. And we need very low amounts of central fatty acids, but you need like literally multi-gram. You do and every day, and here's why we'll get to that. So 10% saturated fat or more is considered dangerous. However, in medicine, you and I both know that there is a dose and a poison. Is it 44 grams like my husband on a 4,000 calorie diet, or is it 14 or 16 if I'm having a 1500 calorie diet? So the question is, what dose of saturated fat is then detrimental for human health? We don't have good evidence for that. The next one is protein. So protein, you'd mentioned that protein is set at the RDA. You said that it was intended to prevent efficiencies. Now we ask you a question. What health outcome is related to nitrogen balance? So the dietary guidelines of protein, point eight grams per kg, is based on nitrogen balance studies technique from early 1900s for agriculture to determine what was the minimal amount of protein needed for animals to grow based on nitrogen balance. What health outcome is related to nitrogen balance? I always say it's muscle mass, but I think that's not the answer because it's too obvious. There's no health outcome that we know of related to nitrogen balance. And so rather than asking the question, is the RDA enough? A better question is, is the RDA relevant number? Yeah. And the RDA is an irrelevant number. Why? Because it's based on nitrogen balance studies with no health outcomes. And so how do we look at the upper limit or the, you know, like, I mean, there are certain populations like if you have kidney failure, you have to be careful with protein need, but aside from that. But it's not based on an RDA number. And this is the thing is that rather than re-evaluating and reorienting ourselves to, you know, the indicator, amino acid number or some other way of thinking about protein, we've anchored in on the RDA. And then we argue about the RDA is if it's a really relevant number. It's not. Poin 8 grams per kg is based on a nitrogen balance study, which is arguably irrelevant. 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Try it today at bondcharge.com slash hymen and use code DR mark for 15% off. That's B-O-N-C-H-A-R-G-E.com slash hymen code DR mark. I mean, I don't know if you've single-handedly done this or who else is on the bandwagon here, but now protein is in everything. It's like everybody's talking about it. We don't, right, and you and I know we've been having this conversation. I've been having this conversation for 20 years and it's great that it's caught up and then it's getting the visibility it deserves and there should be good evidence and guardrails. So 0.8 grams per kg while people are talking about the RDA isn't your relevant number. We know again and I've sent this unit because I always should be what should be be it? Well, the data would suggest beyond 0.8 grams per kg the data suggests anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kg, which could be on the low-end 0.7 grams per pound up to 1 gram per pound target bodyweight. But how do we make our protein decisions? No, no, you're talking. You're talking about if you're 300 pounds target bodyweight. Like what you ideally would like to be. Yes, you can say so as if I'm 180 and I want to get to 190 with muscle, I have to eat 190. Yes, but let's let's let's bring this out a little bit and I make this very easy to think about in the book. The book doesn't have a ton of numbers, which is interesting because we always calculate the macros and calculate the calories. I made this playbook so that it's visual and the visual component is one third of your plate should be protein. One third of your plate should be fruits and vegetables. The other third is complex carbs or starchy sugary carbs that you earn, which we'll talk about. But the protein conversation is really important. 0.8 grams per kg is irrelevant number based on nitrogen balance studies. All of the data coming out largely for the last 20 plus years is 1.2 will always perform better in a number of ways than 0.8 grams. Okay, higher protein, 1.2 to 1.6. So double the RDA, what happens? Yeah. Improvement and retention of lean body mass. I didn't say muscle because we haven't really been testing muscle. Lean body mass. Better regulation of blood glucose, better regulation of triglycerides. So when I was running a weight management clinic at Washoe and also in our practice, in order to tell if someone is following their nutrition plan, we watched their triglycerides. Yeah, of course. Right? 140 grams of carbohydrates or less, we typically see an improvement in triglycerides by 20%. So those are the things that are most highly correlated in a Q way. Do the amount of sugar and start to eat. But it's actually related to muscle health. So if muscle is healthy, you have more flexibility. So these indications of metabolic syndrome, elevated levels of blood glucose, elevated levels of triglyceride, elevated levels of insulin, they're not a reflection of metabolic syndrome, they're a reflection of muscle health. Now, we talk about protein as if it's one thing. Protein is 20 different amino acids in nine of which are essential, but they all have different biological pathways and there's biological needs that are different. So for example, as we age, glutathione. Glutathione production goes down. We might need three times more protein in methionine as we age than we do when we're younger. Bionine is one of the building blocks that we've applied. Right. So it's one of the amino acids. When you're eating from muscle health, all of those amino acids, essential and non-fallant align. And you know, someone's listening to this while, okay, protein is protein, why do I need protein? Well, you need protein for everything in the body, but it's not just protein, it's these amino acids. It's these individual amino acids that you need. Lucine is important for muscle health. Right. For muscle health. You're the one who told me that Lucine was the rate limiting amino acids for turning on the switch that starts you to build muscle. Yes, but you need all of the amino acids to build muscle, which is, you know, if we begin to just unpack what does that look like? So 20 different amino acids, nine in which are essential, you must eat them for a number of reasons. The first thing is understanding that we don't need it just for muscle. The body turns over, recreates itself four times a year. On a daily basis, protein turnover is between 250 to 300 grams a day. Meaning you are metabolizing your own body's protein and recycling it and everything reusing amino acids that were formerly a different protein. Correct. And at night, you are in a catabolic state, but it's not that it's turned on and off. You've got enzymes that are degrading. You are constantly requiring these proteins. It takes it from muscle. So it's not just that low muscle mass is detrimental for mobility. Low muscle mass is detrimental for healthy aging. And we cannot meet our turnover needs with the kind of diet that we have right now. So we need more protein. So people should be focusing on 0.7 to 1 gram. And that's for everybody. For everybody. And the way in which you do it is important. When you're young and under 40, it doesn't matter what you do. Protein distribution and timing doesn't matter. Meaning when you eat it, how much you eat at once, but as you get older, you have to learn how to make protein decisions. And there are a handful of steps that you fall to make a protein decision. Hall it to us. Number one, age, the older you are, the more protein you need. Period. Number two, physical activity. The more sedentary you are, the more protein you need. Really? Yes. Because we were talking about M-Tor, which was mammalian target of rap mice and this protein-continue you build muscle just by any more protein that exercising. Not really. Not really. That's what I thought. You know, people will say that, but if you go back, well, number one, the other thing that we have to recognize is that the studies and the literature out there, it takes a long time. If you think about sarcopenia, it's in a span of a decade, you're losing 4% or more of muscle mass. That's a very slow decline. If you think about it, can you imagine trying to look at these 12 week studies and try to get a sense of the input of 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kg? It's, this stuff is not very sensitive with the tools we have. We're not taking someone's muscle and then stripping it down, right? So we have to understand that low protein intake is over a lifetime, right? These effects are over the lifetime. So the protein decision is the older you get the more you need. Number one, your age. Number two, activity. The less active you are, the more protein you need because if there's two main ways to stimulate muscle as you age and becomes less sensitive, it's the mechanical input as resistance training and then it's the protein input. And then your metabolic hell, right? So the next choice would be how do you determine how much protein? Well, you know, you want to begin to limit carbohydrates if you're metabolically unhealthy and you want to increase dietary protein because ultimately if we match our diet to our muscle health and we will be able to live a long, healthy life, what does it look like? Because people are like, God, it's a lot of protein. But why do they think that? Because we've been tied. But what does it look like? You eat it, like breakfast, lunch, dinner. So very simple. This morning I had a protein shake, which was 50 grams. Great. We're approaching. Amazing. And then 10 grams of creating. You're like rock star. Your brain function is amazing. And you threw a little uralith and A in there and look at your. I did. I like uralith and A in the same. You're doing amazing. So there's a couple ways to do it. The first meal when you're coming out of an overnight fast is the most important. People talk a lot about fasting. And at some point, if we believe that muscle is the organ of longevity, I don't really care when you have breakfast, but recognize that after an overnight fast, you are in a catabolic state, right? And not just your muscles, but you've got enzymes in and everything else is repairing and rebuilding in your body. That first meal, your body is primed for nutrients. Doesn't have to be at 8 a.m. It could be at 10 a.m. Between 30 and 50 grams of protein is ideal. Okay. What does that look like? It could be a 15 gram, a 50 gram protein shake. It could be. It's actually double what the says on the label says it says two scoops is 25. I put in four scoops. Well, I love that. But it's a lot of smoothie. I mean, I'm a big guy. You're going to have it, but it's a lot of it. So let's talk about another. Let's talk about something that I do. Right. So for me, I might have a scoop of a way protein shake, which has about 20 grams of protein, two and a half grams of leucine. But that's not enough for me because, you know, I'm burning the candle up both ends and I'm training hard. So I'll add in a scoop of essential amino acids. You can use sub one with amino I do. But I do it very strategically and for a very important meaning. So I know that you use body health. So do I? Perfect. Aminos was a big part of my recovery to. Yes. And so there's great evidence for recovery. And also for people who say want to control their calories, you have a base of protein and maybe it's 20 grams. And then you add in a scoop of essential amino acids. And now you bump up what your body says. Yes. And there's a lot of data out there on this, especially looking at the aging population, which I think is really impressive. When you're young, you can get a max muscle stimulation at, you know, 14 grams of protein. But 14 grams of protein for you and 14 grams of protein for me won't it won't stimulate our muscle. But by doubling that amount or by adding these essential amino acids, you now can create a robust response that's critical for aging. Well, I'm going to approach you shake with some extra amino acids. What if you don't want to protein shake with breakfast? Eggs. You need six eggs to get 30 grams of protein. That's right. So do three eggs plus essential amino acids. I've just solved it. Also, what about Greek yogurt? Greek yogurt is easy. The minimum you want to hit is 30 grams. And what is that six ounces eight ounces? Yeah. So it's a cup of yogurt. We'll have like 20. And then you could have turkey sausage, chicken sausage. If you are vegan or vegetarian, then I highly recommend essential amino acids and then some kind of multi vitamin. So what do you do? Again, if you're vegan or vegetarian, it could be tofu. You know, the majority of protein comes from wheat in the US diet. Yes. And wheat is a very poor source of these essential amino acids. So we're really talking about improving protein. We're talking about improving nutrient density protein quality. That's exactly right. Protein quality. So we'll be lunch. So for me, actually, and also from a dosing perspective, lunch doesn't matter from a protein amount. Yes. Because we don't have a ton of data, it doesn't have to be 30 grams of protein or is your muscle primed the way I think about lunch is that that's the place where you just get your extra protein. The most important part about also these meals is balancing carbohydrates. So for lunch for me is so lunch today is going to be I prep all my food on a Tuesday. By the way, prep all my food on Tuesday. Lunch for me, my laugh for me is going to be approaching waffles made with cottage cheese, almond flour, and some blueberry compote. Blueberries, you're eating blueberries now? Of course. I couldn't let you know. I know. See, I've evolved. So the protein waffles are amazing. So that is one of it's a recipe that I put in the book. So all the recipes in the playbook are easy. Yeah, there's some great recipes in this book. And there's great images of exercise. You've got a little avatar cartoon of you that was really great. And it's like, wow, this is something I actually could follow because I was like, right, well, I want to vary something. I don't want to do something I travel. Well, I don't know that my trainer like, what do I do? And it's really really great. And then I'll talk about dinner. Dinner is the last. I often will have like a couple of cans of sardines. That's like almost 50 grams. Yes. And if I need a 180 grams of protein a day, there's a lot of protein. But for who? Well, I mean, say saying like, if I have 50 grams for lunch for breakfast, then I have a couple of cans, right? That's 50 grams. I need another 80 for dinner. Yes. And so, but here's the other part is the more active you are. So protein decisions, it's a U shaped curve. And if you think about a U, at the top is the worst of all worlds is if you are an older person who is sedentary. This is the worst of all worlds for muscle health and metabolic health. But as you become more active, then, you know, say like you're moderately active, your protein need goes down. So you offset the amount of protein you're eating with your physical muscle activity. And then as you move into the more elite activity, which I'm not doing and you're not doing the more protein you need. So dinner would be what? For me, it's a lean steak. Six ounces. My lean, my my low fat. Because I keep my I actually do better with carbohydrates. If I were to allocate how I want my food to be, I do much better on a higher carbohydrate diet. Then on a higher fat diet. And it's just personal choice. Carbohydrates and fats are interchangeable as fuel sources. I mean, you mean you don't mean like like, wow, sugar. I mean, you mean like sweet potato or no, I just eat ice cream for dinner. I'm just kidding. No, I mean, no, no, I don't. Let's be specific because I think people hear that and they're like, oh, carbs are interchangeable. But I, but also, how do we think about carbohydrates? No, I don't have a big ball of pasta or we talk about how much protein someone needs in a day in a 24 hour period, close to 0.7 to 1 gram per pound. But carbohydrates should be thought of as a meal threshold. We never talk about that. People do not talk about that. Just like protein has a meal threshold. Carbohydrates should be thought of as a meal threshold. Are you ready for this? The average American is eating 300 grams of carbohydrates a day. That's three glucose tolerance tests a day. Okay. But how do we recreate? Of course, 75 grams in glucose tolerance test. How do we read? That's really funny. How do we recreate that? So for me, dinner is around 40 grams of carbs, 40 to 50. Okay. Anything above that for someone who's listening who is sedentary begins to distort metabolism. And I cover this in the book. It's something called a carbohydrate threshold. Carbohydrate threshold is how many grams of carbohydrates can you have at a meal before you begin to distort metabolism? What the choices are, again, one third is protein, one third is fruits or vegetables, fibers, carbs. One third is more complex carbs. Is there a place for pasta? There is if you're training hard, right? There's a place for pasta. But for me, you know, to I like potato, I like white potato. I like resistant starch. I might make the rice. I mean, IE rice. But again, I eat I also train. And I am not grazing all day long. The thing is, you know, what people don't realize is there's just concept of metabolic flexibility. Right. If you're a diabetic and you have a can of coke, your blood sugar go out of 300. If you or I have a can of coke, our blood sugar won't go above normal because we're metabolically able to handle the same sugar load because we're trained and where our muscles and our tissues are more sensitive to insulin. And we can actually regulate our blood sugar in ways that people can't get in the same exact dose of carbohydrate when the form of carburetors. Yes. It's really important. I want to kind of shift gears a little bit. I think this is fascinating. I think, you know, we covered a lot. But I want to talk about some of the sort of added things that I do and I know you do. I mentioned creatine. And I think there's a lot of increasing data on creatine. I've been using it for a long time. For cognition. For cognition. For muscle. For muscle-building. It's a mitochondrial co-factor. And I use a lot of mitochondrial therapies from my own health because I've had mitochondrial issues. And one of the things that I've started using is something called uralithin A, which for those of you don't know, we've talked about a little on the podcast. But essentially, it's a molecule that's what we call a postbiotic, as opposed to a prebiotic or a robotic. It's a molecule that's made from using microbiome converting certain plant chemicals, ledge gas, and others from a granite wall in those berries into this molecule. Problem is most of us have taken antibiotics. Most of us, I mean, I do talks and I have like a thousand people. I mean, who here has never taken anybody like maybe one personal razor hand or maybe nobody. And so we all kind of messed up our gut and have trouble making this. But this molecule is found to have some really extraordinary properties around muscle quality, strength, longevity, muscle function, and humation, and humane auto-condrial function. So can you kind of walk us through what the research is on this compound? I mean, they're talking about grip strength and things like the thing that kind of blows my mind about the research on this is that even without exercise, it seems to improve your fitness and strength, which seemed a little bit weird to me, but it seems to be true based on the data, including the bio-to-max grip strength, things that are highly correlated with longevity. Now, um, your lithin A is a postbiotic that the majority of people cannot make. And this comes from these allowed jatannins, from walnut, pomegranate, and let's say you could make it, it would be, I don't know, six, four cups of pomegranate juice. It's a lot of sugar. But the reality is, is um, this your lithin A compound is so fascinating. And the company that we are both talking about as timeline because I don't, I don't recommend actually other forms of your lithin A because I think it should really be tested. Yeah, they spend, they spend like a hundred million dollars researching these stuff. It's, it's crazy. And it's published in JAMA and in medical journals. It's not like a, like there's a lot of crappy supplements out there. There's a lot of hype and promotion. This is one of those things where, you know, you and I focus on where's the data? Where's the evidence? It's no good as it. You know, where's it? I mean, I'm a huge fan. And we had an honor, I'm saying, which is one of their immunologist scientists on and the podcast. And there's some really cool stuff that your lithin A is responsible for. What does it do? It's primary role is in mitophagy. And that is the removal and degradation of old mitochondria. And you know, when you think about muscle and you think about your lithin A, the house of our mitochondria, the majority of our mitochondria is in our muscle. And one of the things that your lithin A does is it really helps with this turnover process. And the other fascinating thing about your lithin A that cleans up old damaged mitochondria and helps build new ones. Yes, it does. And the other aspect in terms of energy and metabolism, I think that we're going to start to see emerging data. So we know that it helps improve strength and endurance. Again, grip strength. I think there's also evidence for its use in individuals that are going through chemotherapy because it helps with this muscle metabolism component. And it's just, it's a really extraordinary compound. One of the things that we hear in our clinic is that people's energy improves. I think that there's also going to be some emerging data on cognitive function. It's also, I think a paper just came out in, was it in JAMA on immune function and your lithin A? They just published another recent paper. And it's, we typically recommend a thousand milligrams a day. That's what I take care. And you can take it in gummies, you can take it in powder, you can take it in pills. Yeah. It's pretty extraordinary. It's a pretty extraordinary compound that we definitely recommend. And I think, you know, what would I like about it is that, you know, it's, it's sort of a phytochemical, it comes in nature or sort of your microbiome mix it. But it works on the mitochondria. And the mitochondria are tricky because they're very delicately little organelles inside ourselves that convert food and oxygen into energy or ATP that runs everything in our body. And it's sort of the foundation of our health. And most age-related conditions are mitochondrial diseases. In fact, sort of aging itself is a decline in mitochondria. See a two year old running around like a Jack rabbit and a 92 year old sitting on the couch doing nothing. The difference is their mitochondria. And and their ability to improve our mitochondrial health as we get older is partly related to exercise, training, muscle quality, you know, cardiovascular fitness, both muscle strength training, and and also to, you know, things that we can actually influence by reducing our level of inflammation and toxins and infections and all the things that eventually affect it. But there are a lot of mitochondrial therapies. And it's something that has not been really well utilized in medicine at all. And what happens is that, you know, as we think about chronic illness, whether it's dementia or Parkinson's or obesity or diabetes or even cancer, you know, autism, you know, mental illness, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, and list goes on. These are all mitochondrial diseases. And you and I went to medical school. And I think we had our first year, we learned biochemistry and we learned about somaticondria and histology and like that was kind of it. Yeah. There's no like, how do you evaluate mitochondria? How do you test them? How do you treat them? How do you optimize their function? And as someone who at 36 years old got walloped with chronic fatigue syndrome as a result of mercury poisoning, my mitochondria like were in bad shape. Like my CPK, my muscle enzyme for 600. Really? Yes. For years and years and years. That's a sign of mitochondrial injury, basically muscle damage. Yeah. And I could feel it like the muscles were burned out at 600. But what's that? Rhabdo, you know, as I was just thinking. Well, there's no rhabdo analysis. But it was like, it was some degree of muscle dysfunction. I mean, when you get on a statin that causes muscle injuries, a mitochondrial toxin. And it actually leads to these muscle pain syndromes and also elevations in this muscle enzyme that I had. But what I'm saying is that I got to really learn, okay, what are my mitochondria? How do they work? And I started applying this in medicine. And so your life in a is a really powerful mitochondrial nutrient. But there's many others. Cook, 10, carnachene, creachene, ribose, and and and and I see no cysteine on the B vitamins and magnesium. There's a lot of things you need to actually produce energy. So it's important real understand how do they take care of their mitochondria? And so this is one incredible tool. And I think it's it's of all the sort of longevity. I agree with you. Well, supplements is quite it's quite unique. And it's part of my daily staple actually. I'm I'm very careful about the it's actually in this book. By the way, yeah, I know you wrote about it in the book. I was going to say that I did because it is something that with all the velocity at which information spreads, how do we begin to make choices that actually can move the needle. And I think that your Alithane is a great one. Absolutely. And I think we're going to start to see it be more involved in what I would love to see is how it actually helps those with chronic illness that are going through the therapies like chemotherapy. Well, it was so much more to talk about is there anything else before I hit the quick fire questions at the end here that you want to share about what you're doing? What's important? What's in the book? I think the big takeaways. What many of the diseases that we're seeing now are a mismatch for muscle health. And if we don't become careful, we're going to trade an obesity epidemic for an epidemic of sarcopenia. And we have an opportunity to not recreate history. And it's happening right now in a way that we've never seen before with the use of gelp ones. And then also with now the more liberal discussions on hormone replacement and specifically the anabolic agents, this is the time. We're learning a lot. Yeah. Yeah. The gelp one thing is interesting. I mean, you're you're not black or white. They're not good or bad. They're like any other tool and when they're applied properly, they can be helpful when they're applied improperly, they can be extremely armed. And they can help with the intramuscular adipose tissue. And again, the next conversation that I would love to see as we begin on this journey, just in general, on reorienting ourselves to muscle health is that anabolic agents beyond testosterone or these myostatin inhibitors. What else do we need to do that affects muscle health? And I will say one last thing regarding this is that a patient can go to their doctor and say, I want a medication that's going to help me lose fat and the doctor probably doesn't think twice about it. But if a patient goes to their doctor and says, I want a medication that's going to help me build healthy muscle, it's a completely different story. Two organ systems yet two completely different biose. Well, what's the answer to that question? Which part? What drug can I take to build muscle? There are anabolic agents that are FDA-approved that we have to have more conversation about that have to be more involved in the conversations just in general. And that is- We're using testosterone more. Yes, and this is the path forward. Yeah. As a mother and a woman, what are the top three things that you do personally to support alongside? I spend time with the people I love. Oh, that's a good one. Just like you, I'm very community oriented. I care about relationships and so I do that. It's true. You reach out to me and I really appreciate that. Take connected. I think that's an important part of we neglect. We can eat well and exercise and take all our supplements. But if you don't build community connection relationships, the quality of your life is less. You're longevity shorter. And consistent consistently, it's not transactional for me. I'm a relationship person. So that's one thing. What are the other two? I always train. You mean strength training? I do. Three times a week. Yes. And if I train hard enough that if I miss a training session, let's say it's impossible. It's usually not. But let's say it was. Let's say my flight was delayed or I was in the airport. And the best that I could do is push-ups in the airport, which I will do. And on the plane, I did go to Australia and did push-ups in the- Yeah, but whatever. People are like, that's a crazy person. I make a count when I'm in there. The crazy people in the other ones that changed the world. So I'm with you on that. Okay, great. I train hard enough that I'm not dependent on the next workout. If for some reason I'm traveling. Yeah. But resistance training is a non-negotiable. And people say I don't have time, but you don't have time not to. Yeah. I train with my kids. That's just like, that's easy as in my talk. And this guy was like, you either have a choice. You want to be, you want to exercise one hour a day or be dead 24 hours a day. That's fun. That's, that is awesome. And we make training a family affair. You know, I walk down. I see that in your video. I walk downstairs and my son was on the treadmill sprinting. I'm like, Leonidas, it's 8 p.m. This is this is way better than I was like, mom, I gotta get my training in. It's my second training sessions. Yeah, I gotta get it done. I love that. I mean, and so it's not, I'd rather have them decide on the good habits rather than try to break bad ones. Yeah. And what's the third thing? Yeah. Um, the third thing that I do for longevity. This is a toss up. Obviously, the obvious answer is my nutrition. Yeah. But I think that not so obvious answer would be spending time with my husband and really talking about the family and the landscape of how we want to go through life. So spending time on the standards of how we're raising our kids and values. Yeah. That's beautiful. Your mindset and values. That's beautiful. Amazing. All right. Quick fair questions. Fasting for women. Sure. When does it help? When does it hurt? If you're trying to get pregnant, I typically don't recommend fasting. Again, there's nothing magical to fasting. It's calorie control. It allows for gut rest. But you know, if you're more mature and older and want to maintain muscle, don't recommend it. If you decide you want to do it, I train fasted. It's totally your own choice. Choose your own adventure. And you know, 12 hours is, you know, I'm like that. People think that's a fast, but it's not. It's normal. But people eat all night, and then they wake up and eat. And I'm telling you, you didn't eat all night. Yeah. Just at least 12 hours. Artificial sweeteners. Good or bad? Not going to like this. Yeah. Not dead yet. Not dead yet. Because what is the evidence that they're actually okay for your health? I mean, the evidence that they're not because I think it's controversial. So I would say things like Splenda might not be great for the gut microbiome. And that's the real balls. Right. So Suzan, Devkota, someone who I look to to answer those questions. I'm certainly not a micro biome expert. But I think for example, artificial sweeteners when used in moderate doses, you know, not abusing it is. You know, the data doesn't say that it's terrible for you. But again, it does it. But which one? Is there not all crazy? Like is it month food or or like is no problem? Or all this is no problem. Aspartame or the Reef for Tall or Zalantol or Sugar Ockgol or Malatol, those can be problematic. It depends on the kind and it depends on the dose. Right. It depends on the person for a little bit of CB or monk food or I have no. So I don't have problems with those. So this is again, this is just my personal opinion. Um, I'm okay with it. I think one of the things that we have to understand is the way it affects the brain. Because it does it does keep you lit in the areas where you don't want to be which one? All of them may increase, you know, your sweet perception, which causes your brain to light up and to crave more. And so it's I think there's a there's a probably a craving cycle that it activates, but who knows? How about caffeine? Good. All of it. So I the people that should not use caffeine is if you're pregnant, they don't recommend 200 milligrams or more. And you know, listen, if you have a genetic, uh, perhaps you're a slow metabolizer, um, then maybe it's not great for you. But otherwise, I think caffeine has been around for a long time, studied for a long time. And, uh, can be used well. And I drink a lot of caffeine. People make fun of me. They're like, you're five, one, a hundred and ten pounds and you drink more caffeine. You drink, you drink enough caffeine to kill a draft horse. And I would say that this is a. It doesn't affect your sleep. No. That's amazing. Your fast metabolizer. Yes. How about menopause? What's the number one thing women going through that need to know? Be strong. Be strong like forever strong. Yes. Strength is a responsibility. Strength will take you through that time. Physical strength, we get mental strength. It's a lever that you can pull that you have control over. You have to be strong. No amount of hormone replacement is going to be a solution for being strong. It does help balance your hormones. It helps balance blood sugar and insulin helps balance. It's a non-negotiable. It's the new frontier of longevity. It's just it has to happen. What about cold exposure? Good or bad for women? Cold plunges? I love it. I do it every day. No downside. No. No. And that's I have heard of. I think I've been hearing in the, you know, the, the misinformation internet. Yeah. But mechanistic, there's the mechanistic data. So when I told you that we just published this paper on sexual function muscle mass, there has to be a mechanism that then is related in humans. So there can be mechanism, but the mechanism doesn't necessarily translate or hold up. You know, for example, we like you're with an A because we know that there's a proven mechanism translates over to humans. We like essential amino acids because there is a mechanism. We know how this works translates over to human. The idea of cold exposure being different for men or women at this point, there might be mechanistic ideas, but I have not seen that translate over at all. And I think that cold exposure has been used for lifetimes. I have cold exposure protocols in this book. We are very acclimated to our perfect environment. It's not ideal. We want to be on a hormisis. It's a way of stress. Same with heat. Okay. We got a cold punch out back. I can't wait. I would do it in a heartbeat. You will give me a bit of a shot. I'm not wearing yours. I'll do it in a heartbeat. All right. Creatine is something everybody should take your over. Yes. No. I think that it's, again, is there something that everyone should take? No, but creatine is, I, it's been around for a long time. I think there's a lot of positive. The other thing that I think is really valuable to, we didn't talk about is ketones. ketones. Yes. And taking ketones that are preformed, you can, you can take ketones. We don't have drugs to be able to rate us. Tell us about why. Because there's just more and more evidence from a brain perspective, cognitive perspective, you name it. It just seems to improve performance. I think there's a ton of benefits. I talk about that in the book as well. If I could just make a product myself, I would definitely. That would be a not being in ketosis from a diet, but not having supplemental ketones. No, for brain function, right? For the ability of neurons and cells, I mean, from a, because, again, we talk about brain fog all the time and mitochondrial health. Amazing. I mean, ketones are another one. Look, Gabriel, you know, we've known each other a long time. I've seen you grow, evolve, develop your career. He is a spokesperson for a new kind of thinking about muscle health. And you just, I mean, the whole idea of muscle-centric medicine, I think, is brilliant. And your new book forever, Dr. Gabbrell is out. Everybody needs to get a copy. It's a playbook for you. If you want to say healthy long time and be functional and feel good, where can people learn more about your work and what you're doing? Well, you can go to my Instagram, Dr. Gabbrell Lion, my website, Drgabbrell.com. We have a medical practice called Strong Medical. And we have been around for a while and we just have tremendous, tremendous patients and results. Also, my podcast, which you'll be coming on, the Dr. Gabbrell Lion show, I have a newsletter, I have a YouTube, Twitter, they miss anything. I'm also a part-time travel agent for my kids. Uh-huh, amazing. Well, yeah, we all keep up the good work. Make sure you take care of yourself. And thank you for all the wisdom you've given us. Thank you. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman show. 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