Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.760 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.960 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.220 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.440 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.320 | My guest today is Dr. Lane Norton.

00:00:17.780 | Dr. Lane Norton did his training

00:00:19.280 | in biochemistry and nutritional sciences,

00:00:21.840 | and is one of the world's foremost experts

00:00:24.000 | in exercise and nutrition.

00:00:26.000 | He is also an expert in the topic of supplementation

00:00:29.040 | and other tools to augment health.

00:00:31.560 | Today, we discuss a large number

00:00:33.440 | of very important topics in these categories,

00:00:35.560 | and we start the conversation

00:00:36.760 | by establishing what Dr. Norton's thresholds are

00:00:39.820 | for what he accepts as evidence,

00:00:41.720 | in particular, actionable evidence.

00:00:44.000 | So what follows is a description

00:00:46.040 | of what Dr. Norton really believes

00:00:48.120 | is worth paying attention to

00:00:49.540 | versus what he believes is worth ignoring

00:00:52.600 | in the realms of nutrition, training, and supplementation.

00:00:56.160 | So you can be certain

00:00:57.040 | that as we start to go through the topics of sugar,

00:01:01.120 | GLP-1 agonists, things like Ozempic,

00:01:04.200 | artificial sweeteners,

00:01:05.740 | whether you should train to failure or not

00:01:08.240 | during your resistance training sessions,

00:01:09.940 | how much volume of training you need to do,

00:01:12.440 | cardiovascular training and its different forms

00:01:14.840 | in terms of how they benefit healthspan

00:01:17.680 | and lifespan and body composition,

00:01:19.800 | protein and its different sources,

00:01:21.720 | and on and on.

00:01:23.040 | Indeed, we cover many topics in this episode.

00:01:25.680 | You can be sure that all of the information

00:01:28.180 | you hear from Dr. Norton

00:01:29.240 | is being filtered through that extremely stringent filter

00:01:32.800 | that Dr. Norton is so well-known for.

00:01:35.480 | And thus, by the end of today's episode,

00:01:37.600 | you will be armed not only with the latest information

00:01:40.480 | on nutrition, training, and supplementation,

00:01:42.800 | but you'll also be armed with your own filter

00:01:45.280 | to determine what sorts of health protocols

00:01:47.760 | are actionable for you.

00:01:49.440 | Before we begin,

00:01:50.520 | I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:01:52.320 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:01:55.120 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:01:57.400 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:01:59.360 | about science and science-related tools

00:02:01.400 | to the general public.

00:02:02.760 | In keeping with that theme,

00:02:03.860 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:02:06.580 | Our first sponsor is Matina.

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00:02:11.880 | Yerba mate has long been my preferred source of caffeine,

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00:06:36.240 | And now for my discussion with Dr. Lane Norton.

00:06:39.660 | Dr. Lane Norton, welcome back.

00:06:41.940 | - Thanks for having me back.

00:06:43.420 | - Before we jump in, I want to get your stance

00:06:48.420 | on what constitutes evidence.

00:06:51.860 | Because I think a big reason why you are considered

00:06:55.460 | one of the, if not the most trusted person

00:06:58.220 | in the realm of nutrition and training

00:07:00.860 | is that you set a very high bar

00:07:04.540 | for what you consider science-based fact

00:07:08.020 | that motivates action.

00:07:10.540 | So to just kind of break this down

00:07:12.660 | based on my read of the landscape online,

00:07:15.540 | it seems that there's a group of people,

00:07:17.820 | I don't know what to call them, purists or something,

00:07:20.060 | who, unless there's a randomized controlled trial,

00:07:25.060 | so that means in humans, or several,

00:07:28.940 | that points in a particular direction,

00:07:33.740 | they are very unlikely to adopt a new practice,

00:07:36.780 | say, removing a given food or nutrient,

00:07:39.540 | adding a given food or nutrient,

00:07:41.100 | training a certain way, not training a certain way.

00:07:42.900 | Okay, that's one group.

00:07:44.460 | Then there are the people who,

00:07:47.260 | if they are told something could be a value,

00:07:50.900 | they hear it's worked very well for somebody,

00:07:53.380 | maybe they see some before and afters,

00:07:55.680 | and it gets mapped to a mechanism

00:07:59.060 | that exists in humans and animals,

00:08:00.960 | like, oh, there's this molecule,

00:08:02.460 | and if this molecule increases,

00:08:05.020 | X, Y, and Z happens, and training in this way

00:08:06.820 | or eating this way increases that molecule, for instance.

00:08:09.060 | But no randomized controlled trial,

00:08:11.100 | then they're willing to try it or adopt it.

00:08:14.100 | And then there's a third,

00:08:15.020 | probably a fourth category as well,

00:08:16.260 | where people say they don't trust science anyway,

00:08:19.740 | science is flawed, or the controls required

00:08:22.880 | to design a really good experiment are so constrained

00:08:25.220 | that they don't mimic the real world well enough,

00:08:27.900 | and so they're really just interested in what works.

00:08:30.180 | So they look to people that seem

00:08:32.340 | to have achieved the results they want.

00:08:34.480 | Feel free to add another group,

00:08:38.060 | but which group would you consider yourself in personally?

00:08:42.340 | And then where does your evidence

00:08:45.020 | that you put out online and today come from?

00:08:48.900 | And I already know the answer to the last question,

00:08:50.860 | but I think it was important to kind of

00:08:51.820 | spell out the landscape.

00:08:53.100 | - So everything you just mentioned

00:08:55.980 | would fall into the category of evidence.

00:08:58.600 | Everything that we can observe is evidence.

00:09:01.540 | But I think what people really struggle with

00:09:03.340 | is the idea of different levels of quality of evidence.

00:09:05.900 | And if I had to put myself into a group,

00:09:08.320 | I have definitely been on the side of,

00:09:12.100 | well, there's a case study in this journal,

00:09:14.480 | and we're gonna try that now because it must work.

00:09:17.380 | And, or my friend tried this and they said it worked,

00:09:21.980 | so I'm gonna try it.

00:09:23.260 | And then I've also gone to the group of,

00:09:25.900 | well, there's no human randomized control trial,

00:09:27.860 | so I don't believe it.

00:09:28.960 | And I think now, I'm 42 now,

00:09:32.980 | and I've been doing this for two decades.

00:09:36.460 | I think where I'd fall into is it really depends

00:09:40.260 | on how the individual is talking about the evidence.

00:09:43.940 | Okay, so as you can probably imagine,

00:09:45.900 | I get sent a lot of stuff for people to like,

00:09:48.220 | oh, debunk this.

00:09:49.860 | And a lot of times people will send me things and I'll go,

00:09:52.380 | hey, this person said this is their opinion.

00:09:55.140 | That's fine.

00:09:55.980 | Like I may disagree with their opinion,

00:09:57.260 | but I'm not gonna like rake them over the coals

00:09:59.660 | for them saying this is an opinion,

00:10:01.740 | or this is my personal experience.

00:10:03.860 | That's evidence.

00:10:04.700 | It's low quality evidence, but it is evidence.

00:10:07.640 | I think I kind of fall in a line of,

00:10:12.240 | I ideally wanna see human randomized control trials,

00:10:16.620 | but there's also, as you mentioned,

00:10:19.780 | practical limitations with how things are implemented.

00:10:22.620 | And I think one of the things

00:10:24.260 | that gave me a very unique perspective

00:10:26.580 | was the fact that I was doing my PhD in nutrition

00:10:29.740 | after I did a bachelor's in biochemistry.

00:10:32.540 | So I had that mechanistic understanding.

00:10:34.860 | And then I had an absolutely wonderful PhD advisor,

00:10:37.900 | Don Lehman, who just, shout out to him,

00:10:40.860 | got a Lifetime Achievement Award

00:10:42.220 | by the American Society of Nutrition, 20 years too late.

00:10:44.660 | But he was just incredible

00:10:47.980 | at being able to understand the small things,

00:10:51.700 | but how they impacted the big things

00:10:53.660 | and what it looked like overall.

00:10:56.220 | It's like a conductor looking at a symphony, right?

00:11:00.420 | And understanding how the trumpet sounds

00:11:02.460 | affects everything else,

00:11:04.220 | but then not getting so tied up in that

00:11:06.140 | that he can't hear all the music, right?

00:11:07.900 | And he was so good at that

00:11:09.020 | and was so good at getting me to think that way.

00:11:11.900 | And so I think where people out in the landscape

00:11:16.380 | trying to dissimilate this really struggle

00:11:19.540 | is they don't really know,

00:11:21.900 | well, this person decided to study,

00:11:23.540 | and they equate that as evidence

00:11:24.860 | that's equal with any other evidence, right?

00:11:27.500 | And as a researcher, you know,

00:11:30.140 | not all evidence is created equal.

00:11:31.940 | Not all journal articles are created equal.

00:11:34.220 | And I mean, honestly,

00:11:35.140 | people who don't have the research background,

00:11:36.660 | it's hard to unpack this stuff.

00:11:37.980 | So what I would say is

00:11:42.860 | you have to be very careful with people who cite studies.

00:11:46.580 | And one of the things I'll say too is

00:11:48.060 | there's nothing more dangerous

00:11:49.060 | than somebody who's read a biochemistry book

00:11:51.060 | because they're gonna see pathway, biochemical pathway,

00:11:55.100 | there must be an outcome.

00:11:56.340 | So outcomes are what we really care about, right?

00:12:01.740 | At the end of the day, and when I say outcomes,

00:12:04.060 | gaining muscle mass, losing fat mass,

00:12:07.500 | risk of cardiovascular disease, insulin sensitivity,

00:12:12.380 | cancer, right?

00:12:15.260 | These are hard outcomes, right?

00:12:18.580 | And those outcomes are the summation of dozens,

00:12:23.580 | if not hundreds, if not thousands of biochemical pathways,

00:12:28.460 | all summing up to an outcome.

00:12:30.340 | And just because something has a biochemical pathway

00:12:35.940 | doesn't mean it will create an outcome.

00:12:38.500 | But if there's an outcome,

00:12:39.860 | there's absolutely a mechanism to explain it.

00:12:42.940 | Now, let me give you an example

00:12:44.420 | of why this stuff can be so complicated

00:12:46.460 | and why it's so easy for people to,

00:12:48.980 | if you wanna create a narrative,

00:12:50.460 | you can always find a study to create a narrative.

00:12:52.940 | Aspirin, we would agree, is an anticoagulant.

00:12:56.740 | There's a reason they give it to patients

00:12:58.420 | who are at risk for heart disease or a heart attack.

00:13:00.780 | It's 'cause it reduces blood clots, reduces coagulation.

00:13:03.580 | It also activates procoagulant pathways.

00:13:07.100 | But the overall outcome is anticoagulation.

00:13:10.180 | But if I wanted to create a narrative

00:13:12.420 | that aspirin was bad for blood clots,

00:13:14.860 | I could say, well, look at these biochemical pathways

00:13:16.700 | it activates.

00:13:18.380 | And you see this, like, for example,

00:13:21.340 | I could create a narrative that smoking is not bad for you.

00:13:24.340 | I remember reading a meta-analysis

00:13:28.100 | of the effect of smoking on the risk of adenocarcinoma.

00:13:30.900 | And there's a forest plot with probably about 50 studies.

00:13:35.780 | And most of those studies

00:13:37.540 | are to the very far right of the line,

00:13:39.060 | which is increases risk.

00:13:40.700 | And I think the overall effect

00:13:41.700 | was like three or 400% increased risk of adenocarcinoma.

00:13:44.580 | But there were two studies

00:13:47.380 | that were to the left of the line, not by much.

00:13:50.180 | And it wasn't statistically significant,

00:13:51.620 | but I could say, hey, look, I could cite these two studies,

00:13:54.740 | PMID, you know, they showed no increased risk

00:13:58.380 | of adenocarcinoma and actually might be slightly protective.

00:14:00.500 | And by the way, did you know that smoking

00:14:03.700 | decreases the risk of Parkinson's by 30 to 40%.

00:14:06.380 | And by the way, that's very consistent in literature.

00:14:08.460 | - Yeah, that's true.

00:14:09.740 | - So I can start creating this narrative that smoking,

00:14:13.500 | but we know smoking's not good for you.

00:14:15.300 | It's not good for you.

00:14:16.140 | It raises the risk of lung cancer,

00:14:17.700 | all different kinds of cancers,

00:14:19.340 | cardiovascular disease, massive increase in risk, right?

00:14:23.100 | But I could thread the needle of science

00:14:28.100 | using these cherry-picked studies.

00:14:32.180 | And so what I'll tell people is if I go into a topic,

00:14:34.500 | if I go into something,

00:14:36.420 | what I'm looking for highest quality of evidence

00:14:38.580 | is first off, do we have some meta-analyses on this topic?

00:14:43.260 | - Do you wanna just explain for the general listener

00:14:45.500 | what a meta-analysis is?

00:14:47.340 | Just in kind of top contour.

00:14:48.980 | - Absolutely.

00:14:49.820 | So a meta-analysis is basically

00:14:52.020 | where you're trying to compile studies

00:14:53.820 | that ask similar questions and look at

00:14:56.940 | what is the overall effect?

00:14:59.060 | Do we have a consensus in the literature?

00:15:02.060 | And usually they're gonna show

00:15:03.820 | some kind of forest plot of all these studies.

00:15:06.020 | And however far right or left of the center line

00:15:09.140 | is kind of giving you an idea of

00:15:11.200 | how powerful the effect was in that study.

00:15:13.500 | And then you can see the confidence intervals

00:15:15.140 | in terms of how much variability there was.

00:15:18.140 | And then you can see the thickness of the dot on there,

00:15:20.860 | which shows how much it contributed to the overall analysis

00:15:24.380 | by usually how many subjects were in it.

00:15:26.420 | - Right, one study with 10 subjects

00:15:28.340 | would have a very small dot

00:15:29.420 | compared to a subject with 500 subjects.

00:15:31.580 | - Exactly.

00:15:32.740 | And so you're trying to,

00:15:33.940 | now you can do a bad meta-analysis

00:15:36.020 | based on inclusion criteria,

00:15:37.980 | and that's where it's important to look at.

00:15:39.140 | But let me give you an example of a meta-analysis

00:15:41.660 | I cite pretty frequently.

00:15:43.060 | The inclusion criteria is very important

00:15:46.620 | to make sure that you answer the question

00:15:48.540 | that you wanna answer.

00:15:49.460 | And I say this when you're reading scientific studies.

00:15:51.880 | I'm like, listen, just because there's a headline

00:15:55.400 | in even a paper, just 'cause the conclusion says something,

00:15:58.460 | that is the author's opinion, okay?

00:16:00.180 | You need to check to see,

00:16:01.540 | did they actually test what they're talking about?

00:16:05.500 | And are the tests they use valid, right?

00:16:09.500 | So this meta-analysis was looking at lower carb diets

00:16:13.180 | versus higher carb diets or low fat diets.

00:16:16.140 | And the inclusion criteria,

00:16:17.700 | this was done by Kevin Hall of the NIH back in 2017,

00:16:20.500 | I wanna say.

00:16:21.340 | And I thought he did a great job at the inclusion criteria,

00:16:26.020 | which was we're only gonna include controlled feeding trials

00:16:29.700 | where the food is provided to participants,

00:16:31.860 | because obviously we know the limitations

00:16:33.540 | of free living studies with nutrition.

00:16:36.940 | - Right, self-report.

00:16:38.380 | People sneak, people forget.

00:16:40.120 | - We are going to make sure

00:16:42.620 | that these studies equated calories

00:16:45.820 | for the reasons we talk about.

00:16:46.940 | You gotta compare apples to apples, right?

00:16:48.780 | So a lot of studies will come out saying fasting

00:16:50.740 | produced more fat loss, low carb produced,

00:16:53.060 | but then they didn't control calories,

00:16:54.460 | and it's very likely these people just ate less.

00:16:57.460 | So they controlled calories and they controlled protein,

00:17:00.300 | which is also important

00:17:01.300 | 'cause protein changes the composition of weight loss.

00:17:03.640 | Protein has a thermic effect.

00:17:05.660 | Protein increases lean mass retention.

00:17:07.860 | So that can change how much fat you lose.

00:17:10.680 | And I think that it also had a requirement

00:17:13.800 | of like a minimum of four weeks, right?

00:17:16.080 | And the outcome was looking at changes in fat mass,

00:17:20.580 | not fat oxidation, not energy expenditure.

00:17:24.220 | It actually looked at the outcome that they cared about.

00:17:26.920 | And they showed no difference, right?

00:17:29.300 | So I thought, well, that's a very well-done meta-analysis

00:17:33.540 | because the inclusion criteria make a lot of sense

00:17:36.180 | for the question that they wanna answer,

00:17:37.660 | which is not, is one diet easier to stick to?

00:17:40.940 | Not, is it more practical?

00:17:44.300 | The question was mechanically,

00:17:46.880 | do these diets produce differences

00:17:49.280 | when we're comparing apples to apples in actual fat loss?

00:17:52.640 | And the answer was no, right?

00:17:54.460 | So, and then when you look at the other meta-analyses

00:17:58.900 | that have been done,

00:17:59.780 | they tend to kind of support that, right?

00:18:02.580 | So the first thing I'm gonna look at is all right,

00:18:05.100 | these meta-analyses tend to be looked at

00:18:06.780 | as kind of the highest form of evidence, right?

00:18:08.880 | Because you're compiling a bunch of different studies,

00:18:11.440 | which, listen, we know there are bad studies that get done.

00:18:15.180 | I think the amount of studies

00:18:16.500 | that get like just straight up faked

00:18:18.140 | is probably much lower than people think, but-

00:18:21.220 | - One hopes, but yeah, I would agree.

00:18:23.620 | I think that people make errors.

00:18:26.220 | I do think that a lot of quote unquote bad papers,

00:18:30.700 | or let's just say false conclusions,

00:18:32.860 | arise from elimination of data

00:18:35.820 | that did not fit the person's desired outcome.

00:18:39.720 | And the reason I say that

00:18:40.620 | is I think it's impossible to control for.

00:18:42.660 | So you've got the student or postdoc doing the experiment,

00:18:46.460 | the results don't come out the way they would have preferred

00:18:48.940 | and then they're, let's just say I've observed before,

00:18:52.500 | never in my laboratory, fortunately,

00:18:54.180 | but cases where people come up with reasons

00:18:58.300 | why that particular experiment wasn't valid

00:19:00.240 | because the mice were initially sick

00:19:02.220 | or the lot of drug that they used wasn't,

00:19:04.900 | it was heading towards expiration,

00:19:07.060 | they come up with reasons to exclude

00:19:08.860 | rather than outright data fabrication

00:19:12.060 | where people literally create results that aren't there.

00:19:15.780 | And there are a number of different examples

00:19:18.420 | throughout history where people have done that,

00:19:20.180 | but I like to think that those are more rare.

00:19:22.620 | - I think that's probably pretty small.

00:19:23.980 | My experience is the same as you.

00:19:24.980 | I didn't see much of that, or I never saw it observed.

00:19:28.280 | - Usually end up reading about that

00:19:30.420 | in the form of retractions in journals that come out.

00:19:33.460 | Nowadays, more close to the publications

00:19:35.580 | because of AI's ability to scan images

00:19:38.200 | and things of that sort.

00:19:39.140 | - Yeah, I think, you know,

00:19:41.620 | usually if I see a paper and the conclusion,

00:19:45.240 | like just straight up, I go, oh, I don't know about that.

00:19:49.620 | When I go in and I read the methods

00:19:51.860 | and I read how they analyzed it

00:19:53.420 | and I read how they measured things,

00:19:56.380 | 99% of the time I walk away and go,

00:19:58.560 | okay, I'm not surprised they found what they found, right?

00:20:00.740 | Because again, a lot of, and this does happen

00:20:05.180 | and it shouldn't, but a lot of studies are set up

00:20:08.580 | to kind of find what people want to find.

00:20:10.340 | You can bias things in a certain way.

00:20:12.380 | - Well, and what nobody talks about

00:20:14.840 | or it's not discussed enough is that a lot of times

00:20:17.200 | the way the paper is written poses a question

00:20:20.960 | after the results are in.

00:20:22.400 | I mean, and this is a really a not correct way to do science.

00:20:27.400 | I mean, in clinical trials, one has to wage a hypothesis,

00:20:31.320 | excuse me, wager a hypothesis from the outset

00:20:34.240 | and then you go test that hypothesis.

00:20:35.680 | You're not asking a question.

00:20:36.520 | - And you have to say what you're gonna measure.

00:20:37.600 | - Right, exactly.

00:20:38.640 | Whereas in more typical laboratory science,

00:20:41.280 | people will design an experiment.

00:20:43.820 | They have hypotheses, but then depending

00:20:46.280 | on how the experiments work out or don't work out,

00:20:49.320 | oftentimes they'll change the question

00:20:51.200 | to modify the hypotheses.

00:20:52.600 | And one wouldn't, as a reader, as a journal,

00:20:55.920 | as a reviewer, one will never know.

00:20:59.040 | And so that's a slight of hand that is, I would say,

00:21:02.800 | unfortunately is very common in bench science.

00:21:06.040 | - But I will say like, there's very rarely

00:21:08.080 | where I say this was a bad study.

00:21:09.600 | Often what I'll say is, I don't agree with their conclusion

00:21:12.280 | based on their data and their design,

00:21:14.620 | but the data is the data, you know?

00:21:16.840 | I was just very fortunate, again, to my PhD advisor,

00:21:20.280 | I have so much gratitude, 'cause he just right away

00:21:23.080 | was like, "Hey, if we're wrong about something,

00:21:25.960 | "that's fine," you know?

00:21:27.160 | And I'll give you an example of how results

00:21:29.560 | can seem to conflict, but how things are designed.

00:21:32.960 | We actually wanted to test,

00:21:34.440 | does protein quality make a difference?

00:21:36.400 | And we wanted to look at it at like, not low,

00:21:39.260 | but like, just kind of like RDA levels of protein.

00:21:43.160 | And we saw that protein quality did make a difference

00:21:44.940 | at those levels of protein.

00:21:46.180 | But if you look at experiments where people are feeding

00:21:48.660 | like high levels of protein,

00:21:49.740 | like 1.6 to two grams per kilogram of body weight,

00:21:53.700 | you don't really see much difference in, you know,

00:21:56.140 | lean mass or protein synthesis

00:21:58.280 | with looking at different protein sources.

00:21:59.940 | Well, that's because it's much more regulatory on a low end

00:22:03.100 | because you're closer to those thresholds

00:22:05.500 | that trigger that signaling.

00:22:07.280 | And so, you know, we wanted to show at that level

00:22:12.320 | that it made a difference.

00:22:13.640 | But then we also acknowledged, okay, at this level,

00:22:15.580 | it probably doesn't make as much of a difference.

00:22:16.980 | But people can read those things and say,

00:22:18.940 | "Well, I don't believe studies 'cause they're conflicting."

00:22:21.280 | But no, when you read how it was designed,

00:22:23.700 | I can easily say, like I remember there was a,

00:22:25.580 | somebody sent me a study and said,

00:22:26.560 | "Well, how does this fit with your data?"

00:22:28.180 | Which they were comparing rice versus whey protein

00:22:30.860 | and found that both stimulated protein synthesis

00:22:32.940 | to the same degree.

00:22:34.180 | And I said, "Well, they used 40 grams of protein."

00:22:36.380 | Like if you get protein high enough,

00:22:38.100 | you can max out protein synthesis

00:22:39.420 | regardless of the form of protein you're using.

00:22:42.420 | And so that's just like one of those examples, right?

00:22:45.340 | So when I'm looking through this stuff,

00:22:47.300 | I'm looking at, okay,

00:22:49.680 | it doesn't seem to be a consensus in the data.

00:22:52.620 | And then is it like in these meta-analyses,

00:22:55.600 | does the inclusion criteria make sense?

00:22:57.700 | And then if there's no real agreement

00:22:59.460 | amongst the meta-analyses,

00:23:01.500 | then I'm looking at, okay,

00:23:02.940 | what do the most tightly controlled studies show?

00:23:05.780 | Like in the randomized control trials.

00:23:08.220 | And then I'm kind of like basing opinion off that.

00:23:11.420 | But you know the hierarchy of evidence, the pyramid,

00:23:15.860 | you got meta-analysis, systematic reviews,

00:23:18.140 | randomized control trials,

00:23:20.020 | you have cohort data,

00:23:22.140 | epidemiology and then animal studies

00:23:23.660 | tend to get kind of lumped in together.

00:23:25.420 | And then you got like case studies

00:23:26.840 | and so on and so forth, right?

00:23:28.860 | And so all that stuff is valid.

00:23:30.780 | It's all valid.

00:23:31.620 | I think where I spend a lot of time on social media

00:23:34.700 | is for example, I'll give you a great example.

00:23:38.540 | Someone saying, well,

00:23:41.700 | you don't wanna eat cruciferous vegetables

00:23:43.820 | because they have isocyanthanates in them,

00:23:45.580 | which can bind to iodine.

00:23:47.580 | And that is going to impair your thyroid function,

00:23:50.400 | lower your metabolic rate and cause you weight gain.

00:23:53.480 | And so that's a pathway, that's a mechanism.

00:23:57.960 | Is it possible?

00:23:59.400 | I suppose it is possible, right?

00:24:00.640 | That pathway does exist.

00:24:01.820 | Iodine is important for thyroid function.

00:24:04.020 | Isocyanthanates do bind to iodine.

00:24:07.020 | You can take any food, even organic food,

00:24:10.260 | and you can find a compound in it

00:24:13.420 | that if you fed it in a high dose,

00:24:15.460 | it would have weird effects, right?

00:24:18.080 | And so the question is not, if you eat something,

00:24:22.180 | are there compounds in it

00:24:23.220 | that maybe activate negative biochemical pathways?

00:24:25.860 | The question is, what is the overall outcome?

00:24:28.180 | And so when these pathways are promoted

00:24:31.100 | versus let's see if we actually have

00:24:33.500 | randomized control trials in humans

00:24:36.140 | that measure what we actually care about.

00:24:38.340 | And so we do have, like in that particular case,

00:24:40.220 | we have randomized control trials looking at,

00:24:42.820 | okay, cruciferous vegetable intake and thyroid function,

00:24:45.780 | and there's no difference in the outcome.

00:24:47.860 | And so what that says, and then no difference in BMR,

00:24:50.740 | and then actually people who eat

00:24:52.080 | more cruciferous vegetables

00:24:53.060 | actually tend to be a little bit leaner,

00:24:54.540 | but that could be a little bit of healthy user bias,

00:24:56.180 | and they'd probably just eat less calories

00:24:57.340 | 'cause they're more satiated.

00:24:58.420 | But it's certainly not going the opposite direction, right?

00:25:01.320 | And so the point is, again, if an outcome exists,

00:25:07.620 | there is absolutely a mechanism to explain it,

00:25:12.100 | but just because a mechanism exists

00:25:13.980 | does not mean you're gonna produce an outcome.

00:25:15.780 | And I got exposed to this very early

00:25:18.060 | 'cause I cut my teeth on the bodybuilding message boards

00:25:20.820 | back in the day where it was a bunch of nerds

00:25:24.100 | arguing with each other,

00:25:25.300 | mostly who had no background arguing,

00:25:27.140 | but there were some actual sports scientists

00:25:30.180 | and professors who would get on those every once in a while.

00:25:32.960 | This was before social media existed.

00:25:35.020 | And I remember I was in biochemistry class, this is 2003,

00:25:38.740 | and they're talking about

00:25:39.980 | how caffeine inhibits glycogen phosphorylase,

00:25:42.980 | which is a mechanism, and it exists.

00:25:44.860 | Caffeine inhibits glycogen phosphorylase.

00:25:48.540 | And so I made this post on the forums, and I said,

00:25:52.460 | well, we should be having caffeine after a workout then

00:25:54.480 | 'cause it'll help with glycogen resynthesis

00:25:56.180 | 'cause it'll keep glycogen phosphorylase

00:25:58.500 | from breaking down glycogen.

00:26:00.220 | And somebody came in and said,

00:26:01.880 | you're really like zooming in on a blade of grass

00:26:05.140 | instead of zooming out and looking at the forest, right?

00:26:07.860 | And biochemists, I was guilty of this,

00:26:09.900 | and biochemists by trade, we get very focused on pathways.

00:26:13.100 | But if you think about what caffeine does overall,

00:26:16.540 | activates the sympathetic nervous system,

00:26:18.800 | its function is to, like, you're liberating fuel.

00:26:23.000 | Like you, and some people, when they take caffeine,

00:26:25.300 | actually have a rise in blood glucose.

00:26:27.300 | So that is, the outcome is actually counter

00:26:30.260 | to what that biochemical pathway is.

00:26:32.540 | And so we've gotta be really careful

00:26:34.820 | with how we promote these biochemical pathways.

00:26:37.120 | I mean, I did a really funny post on Twitter

00:26:38.860 | where myself and Joseph Sundell,

00:26:41.020 | I'm not sure if you're familiar with him,

00:26:42.100 | but he's a cancer biologist, great guy.

00:26:45.020 | And we were joking back and forth.

00:26:46.360 | I said, you know what, I bet I could, like,

00:26:49.660 | come up with a pathway to get people to eat poop.

00:26:54.380 | Like, I can make a compelling argument for just eating poop.

00:26:57.580 | And then he goes, I'll bet, he's like, I'll take that bet.

00:27:00.940 | I'm like, okay, let's give it a shot.

00:27:03.300 | So I'm like, what is some of the most common compounds

00:27:06.140 | in human fecal matter?

00:27:07.020 | And one of them is butyrate, right?

00:27:08.620 | Which is a short chain fatty acid produced by fermentation.

00:27:12.040 | Butyrate, and so I did this post where I'm like,

00:27:16.020 | here's why you should eat poop to lose fat.

00:27:18.300 | Butyrate increases fat oxidation.

00:27:20.020 | I think it activates brown fat,

00:27:21.600 | increases insulin sensitivity, decreases inflammation.

00:27:24.860 | It's been shown to actually ameliorate

00:27:27.720 | the development of obesity in studies.

00:27:31.660 | And so I had all these PubMed ideas.

00:27:33.340 | Now, what I didn't tell people was,

00:27:35.740 | those are all mostly in rodents, right?

00:27:38.060 | And it's giving an amount of butyrate

00:27:39.340 | that you'd need to eat about 50 to 100 pounds

00:27:41.460 | of fecal matter a day in order to get, right?

00:27:43.900 | - Sounding like a worse and worse idea by the moment.

00:27:46.720 | - But that is very similar to a lot of the content

00:27:49.620 | that is out there, which is find isolated compound,

00:27:53.000 | scare people or promote it to be the best thing ever,

00:27:57.740 | and then link it to an outcome.

00:27:59.280 | And then sometimes you can tie in epidemiology

00:28:01.120 | with it as well to support whatever you want.

00:28:04.080 | But again, like I'm not saying,

00:28:06.840 | I do things in my training and my nutrition

00:28:08.840 | that don't have randomized control trials to support, right?

00:28:12.520 | They don't really have anything to support.

00:28:13.680 | It's just, it's how I've kind of fallen into doing things.

00:28:19.200 | So that's okay.

00:28:20.720 | But what I wouldn't do is come out and say,

00:28:23.880 | what I do is the best thing ever and here's why,

00:28:26.320 | especially if there was human randomized control trials

00:28:28.720 | to the counter, that is the biggest thing, right?

00:28:32.200 | If we have human randomized control trials

00:28:34.040 | and they're going the opposite direction

00:28:35.520 | of a case study or an observation,

00:28:38.180 | there's a reason human randomized control trials,

00:28:40.680 | I scream about them all the time,

00:28:42.120 | and why they're considered the gold standard of evidence.

00:28:45.440 | When we look at cohort data, you're just observing people.

00:28:48.800 | There's no intervention.

00:28:49.640 | - Maybe explain what cohort data are.

00:28:51.080 | Is it comparing two groups?

00:28:52.400 | - Sure.

00:28:53.240 | So cohort data, you're comparing groups,

00:28:54.840 | but you're not having an intervention.

00:28:56.320 | So you're tracking them over the course of however,

00:28:58.640 | what period of time.

00:28:59.880 | A lot of cohort studies,

00:29:00.700 | like looking at cardiovascular disease, cancer.

00:29:02.400 | - These people decided to be vegan.

00:29:04.080 | These people decided to be, let's just say omnivores.

00:29:08.320 | - Those are some of the classic experiments, right?

00:29:09.960 | - And they weren't assigned to this experiment.

00:29:12.300 | They agreed to join the experiment.

00:29:14.500 | They'd been eating this way for a while.

00:29:16.680 | You ask them a bunch of questions.

00:29:18.480 | And you look at, okay, over 10 years, over 20 years,

00:29:21.560 | who gets whatever more often or less often, right?

00:29:25.760 | And then we try to figure out and back calculate,

00:29:28.960 | okay, what's the effect and is this real?

00:29:32.240 | The problem is you have a lot of bias

00:29:36.600 | with those sorts of studies.

00:29:38.000 | Meaning people don't do single habits.

00:29:42.340 | They don't isolate habits.

00:29:44.440 | I actually put up a reel the other day

00:29:46.220 | from my appearance on Stephen Bartlett's podcast,

00:29:48.820 | where he said, if I wanna fix my diet, I go to the gym.

00:29:52.320 | 'Cause a lot of people do that.

00:29:53.240 | If they're training in the gym,

00:29:54.160 | they don't wanna waste their effort

00:29:55.880 | by having a subpar diet.

00:29:57.040 | Now in reality, eating a healthy diet is more important

00:29:59.720 | if you're not going to the gym, right?

00:30:01.680 | 'Cause at least you're getting something.

00:30:03.460 | But people do this habit coupling.

00:30:05.000 | And so it's really hard to disentangle

00:30:07.800 | those sorts of things.

00:30:08.800 | Now, the reason that human randomized control trials

00:30:11.160 | are important is if you're designing an experiment

00:30:15.680 | and you randomize, what you are doing

00:30:19.140 | by randomly assigning people to groups,

00:30:21.840 | you're washing out that bias because you can assume

00:30:26.840 | that whatever inherent characteristics

00:30:29.360 | that might be coupled to whatever you're gonna try

00:30:31.440 | are gonna be randomly distributed

00:30:32.800 | and evenly distributed across the groups.

00:30:34.640 | Therefore, we say human randomized control trials

00:30:37.680 | are kind of what's needed to establish causation

00:30:40.960 | because by randomizing, you can assume

00:30:44.440 | whatever differences are observed between the groups

00:30:47.560 | are due to your treatment

00:30:49.920 | and not due to random chance or data artifacts.

00:30:52.920 | Now, randomized control trials, especially in nutrition,

00:30:56.920 | have very strong limitations,

00:30:59.000 | which is you can't do a randomized control trial

00:31:03.140 | for 30 years.

00:31:04.600 | You can't, I mean, I think the longest

00:31:06.280 | randomized control trial I heard about in nutrition

00:31:07.960 | is like two years long, right?

00:31:09.520 | And even then, it's not gonna be a very tightly controlled

00:31:12.440 | randomized control trial.

00:31:13.560 | I mean, and if you're doing,

00:31:14.480 | if you're talking about like the tightest level of control,

00:31:16.880 | like a metabolic ward study,

00:31:18.320 | four, six weeks, maybe,

00:31:21.560 | 'cause you're keeping people in food jail.

00:31:23.280 | And I think where some of this confusion comes from

00:31:25.800 | is I think people think that there's just like this pool

00:31:27.640 | of people waiting around to be selected for experiments.

00:31:30.520 | Like, yes, I'm ready, I've been waiting here.

00:31:32.400 | No, there are people like you, like me,

00:31:34.680 | like just the average person walking down the street

00:31:36.480 | who saw a flyer and goes, okay, I'll volunteer for that.

00:31:40.000 | And the more control you try to establish over their lives,

00:31:43.520 | the less likely they are to do it.

00:31:44.920 | And you probably gotta pay 'em, you know?

00:31:47.200 | I don't know anybody who would do a metabolic ward study

00:31:50.080 | without getting paid for it.

00:31:51.280 | I mean, you're basically giving up four or six weeks

00:31:54.080 | of your life to go do that.

00:31:55.960 | And so while I love human randomized control trials,

00:31:59.760 | for some things, they're not always appropriate.

00:32:03.400 | For example, if you're trying to look at heart disease

00:32:06.200 | and you wanna do a one-year human randomized control trial,

00:32:10.120 | looking at say, you know, saturated fat, LDL, cholesterol,

00:32:13.720 | those sorts of things, well, how many people

00:32:15.920 | have heart attacks within one year after age 60?

00:32:18.120 | I mean, you're gonna look for really small differences

00:32:20.560 | between really small numbers, right?

00:32:22.600 | And the problem with that is you have no idea

00:32:25.400 | about their diet 40 years leading up to that.

00:32:27.520 | And we know based on now the Mendelian randomization trials

00:32:30.760 | that the risk of LDL is more of like

00:32:32.280 | a lifetime exposure risk.

00:32:34.120 | It's not just in this narrow sliver of time.

00:32:37.080 | And so I love human randomized control trials,

00:32:40.280 | but it's also, I try to tell people,

00:32:42.700 | never turn your brain off.

00:32:45.240 | Just because something gets published in a certain journal,

00:32:48.100 | just 'cause a certain researcher said something,

00:32:50.400 | just because it was a certain design,

00:32:53.940 | it doesn't make it infallible, okay?

00:32:55.600 | Science is perfect.

00:32:57.640 | Science is perfect.

00:32:58.640 | Science is what is.

00:33:00.280 | But it's done by humans and humans are fallible,

00:33:04.640 | imperfect people with their own personal beliefs and biases.

00:33:08.680 | And that's why I look at consensus of data first,

00:33:13.280 | because yeah, you could,

00:33:15.000 | maybe some experiments got faked or maybe they had,

00:33:18.080 | but when it's done over,

00:33:19.520 | let's take something like creatine monohydrate, right?

00:33:22.320 | You have thousands of experiments

00:33:24.640 | done over decades of time in hundreds of different labs

00:33:29.560 | with many different funding sources

00:33:32.200 | in bunch of different countries

00:33:34.420 | under a bunch of different conditions, it works, right?

00:33:37.840 | Like if you go to consensus and you type in,

00:33:40.960 | does creatine build muscle?

00:33:42.480 | It's like 92%, yes, which is crazy.

00:33:45.120 | - Right, consuming five to 10 grams

00:33:46.940 | of creatine monohydrate per day

00:33:48.480 | is going to benefit strength and muscle mass

00:33:51.540 | and likely cognition to some extent.

00:33:54.160 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:33:55.680 | - I'd like to take a quick break

00:33:56.900 | and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1.

00:33:59.560 | By now, many of you have heard me say

00:34:01.140 | that if I could take just one supplement,

00:34:02.920 | that supplement would be AG1.

00:34:05.000 | The reason for that is AG1 is the highest quality

00:34:07.520 | and most complete

00:34:08.440 | of the foundational nutritional supplements available.

00:34:11.160 | What that means is that it contains

00:34:12.600 | not just vitamins and minerals,

00:34:14.000 | but also probiotics, prebiotics, and adaptogens

00:34:17.360 | to cover any gaps you may have in your diet

00:34:19.800 | and provide support for a demanding life.

00:34:22.080 | For me, even if I eat mostly whole foods

00:34:23.920 | and minimally processed foods,

00:34:25.120 | which I do for most of my food intake,

00:34:27.080 | it's very difficult for me to get enough fruits

00:34:29.040 | and vegetables, vitamins and minerals, micronutrients,

00:34:31.760 | and adaptogens from food alone.

00:34:33.960 | For that reason, I've been taking AG1 daily since 2012

00:34:37.400 | and often twice a day, once in the morning or mid-morning,

00:34:40.040 | and again in the afternoon or evening.

00:34:42.080 | When I do that, it clearly bolsters my energy,

00:34:44.480 | my immune system, and my gut microbiome.

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00:35:07.800 | - I realize I've been on a long diatribe.

00:35:10.560 | - No, no, I wouldn't even call it a diatribe.

00:35:13.220 | I think for those listening, this is pure gold

00:35:16.000 | because never before, certainly on this podcast

00:35:19.840 | or other podcasts, has anyone ever really spelled out

00:35:23.620 | how to discern differences in quality of evidence?

00:35:27.080 | - Right.

00:35:28.320 | - It's mostly a free world, most places,

00:35:31.400 | and people can do what they want,

00:35:33.280 | but I think they need to decide

00:35:34.680 | what their thresholds are for quality.

00:35:36.480 | - Yeah, and I think the one other thing I'll tell people is,

00:35:39.340 | I saw this the other day.

00:35:40.280 | I saw somebody post, I think it was a comment

00:35:43.440 | on one of my posts, and I actually commented back.

00:35:45.000 | They said, "I know I can trust you,

00:35:48.360 | "and whatever you say, I know I can take it to the bank."

00:35:52.040 | And I said, "I appreciate that,

00:35:55.000 | "but I am a flawed human like anybody else.

00:35:58.100 | "Please don't turn your brain off."

00:36:00.200 | And one of the things I've really tried to do

00:36:02.920 | now in this stage of my career

00:36:04.400 | is I wanna teach people how to think

00:36:07.400 | because if I just give you the information

00:36:10.040 | and I'm giving you a fish, great,

00:36:14.080 | but I'd rather you understand

00:36:16.560 | how I came to these conclusions,

00:36:18.880 | you can see my logic and how it tracks,

00:36:21.760 | and then you can start applying it elsewhere.

00:36:23.200 | One of the things I say to people is I'm like,

00:36:26.000 | "If you want a quick and dirty hack

00:36:28.200 | "for knowing who to follow,

00:36:30.260 | "try not to listen so much

00:36:31.720 | "to exactly the information people say,

00:36:33.760 | "but listen to how they say it, okay?"

00:36:36.840 | I was just telling you, I was on a podcast the other day

00:36:38.960 | where I said, "You know, here's this study.

00:36:41.520 | "I might butcher the details, and if I get the math wrong,

00:36:44.180 | "if experts out there wanna comment and correct me,

00:36:46.760 | "please do that."

00:36:48.200 | Like, that is a way of talking about something

00:36:52.400 | where you're saying, "Hey, I could get this wrong,"

00:36:55.240 | or, "Hey, I might be uncertain."

00:36:57.160 | That's very different than saying, you know,

00:36:59.840 | just hard, pure, you know,

00:37:03.040 | real experts don't really talk like best,

00:37:04.800 | worst, always, never.

00:37:05.800 | Like, they don't really use words like that.

00:37:08.000 | And one of my favorite phrases that I tell people,

00:37:11.600 | it's actually from an economist named Thomas Sowell.

00:37:14.320 | He said, "There are no solutions.

00:37:15.640 | "There are only trade-offs."

00:37:17.600 | And for example, you know, there's data out there

00:37:22.160 | that if you lower saturated fat,

00:37:23.720 | it may lower your testosterone.

00:37:25.280 | But there's also data out there

00:37:27.520 | that saturated fat raises LDL,

00:37:29.160 | which is an independent risk factor

00:37:30.280 | for cardiovascular disease.

00:37:31.880 | Okay, well, there's trade-offs there, right?

00:37:34.960 | Like, what do you value more?

00:37:36.120 | I would argue that probably the decline in testosterone

00:37:38.280 | isn't really physiologically meaningful for most people.

00:37:42.400 | But again, there's not a good or bad.

00:37:46.080 | There's trade-offs.

00:37:46.920 | And I think when people get talking

00:37:48.280 | about biochemical pathways,

00:37:50.360 | one of the things I really try to hone in on

00:37:52.720 | is like, hey, there's not really good

00:37:54.840 | or bad biochemical pathways either.

00:37:56.360 | Like, all these things exist for a reason.

00:37:58.560 | Like, people, like, one of the things popular is like,

00:38:00.840 | well, inflammation, inflammation.

00:38:02.120 | I'm like, hey, you know, like,

00:38:03.320 | inflammation does some things that we really need, too.

00:38:05.360 | Like, you just don't want, like, no inflammation.

00:38:07.480 | Like, it's actually an important physiological process,

00:38:10.000 | right?

00:38:10.840 | Now, you don't want it to run away, for sure.

00:38:13.560 | And so, again, I just give my PhD advisor

00:38:16.000 | a lot of credit of,

00:38:18.880 | he's like, know what you know,

00:38:21.360 | but always question everything,

00:38:25.720 | even the things we feel most fundamentally are true,

00:38:30.640 | 'cause that is the job of a good scientist.

00:38:32.440 | I'll give you one more story,

00:38:33.600 | and then we'll move to another thing.

00:38:35.440 | When I did my first experiment,

00:38:38.360 | well, actually, sorry.

00:38:39.320 | No, this has been like my 15th experiment,

00:38:41.000 | 'cause my first 14 blew and didn't work.

00:38:44.720 | - A typical graduate career.

00:38:45.920 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:38:47.440 | And again, very patient man, very supportive.

00:38:50.080 | I honestly cannot give him enough credit.

00:38:52.560 | And if you look at the people that came out of that lab,

00:38:56.960 | a lot of studs.

00:38:58.080 | So, I did an experiment looking at whey protein,

00:39:04.400 | or sorry, complete meal with whey protein ingestion

00:39:06.680 | and how long the duration of muscle protein synthesis was.

00:39:09.360 | Because most people kind of measured at 60 or 90 minutes,

00:39:12.020 | like the snapshot post-prandially for protein synthesis,

00:39:15.360 | looking for a peak, and we're like,

00:39:17.080 | "Is that really where the peak is?

00:39:18.200 | "We don't know.

00:39:19.040 | "We're basing this off of purified solutions,

00:39:21.520 | "so let's do a duration experiment," right?

00:39:23.680 | And my hypothesis was,

00:39:26.640 | well, however long leucine is elevated in the blood

00:39:29.080 | is gonna be how long protein synthesis stays up.

00:39:31.880 | And when we got the data back on protein synthesis,

00:39:36.800 | protein synthesis had come up, peaked at 90 minutes,

00:39:39.560 | and by three hours, it'd come back down to baseline.

00:39:42.200 | And I went to run the plasma amino acids,

00:39:43.960 | and I'm like, "Okay, well, this is what we're gonna see."

00:39:46.920 | And that's not what we saw.

00:39:48.640 | So, plasma amino acids, not only were still elevated,

00:39:51.240 | they were maxed out, or plateaued,

00:39:53.900 | at the highest level they would be at, three hours,

00:39:56.200 | where protein synthesis was back to baseline.

00:39:59.120 | And so, I said, "Okay, well, it's gotta be mTOR signaling.

00:40:02.420 | "mTOR signaling's gotta be turning off,

00:40:04.080 | "or something's happening."

00:40:05.060 | Nope, mTOR signaling was still elevated, right?

00:40:07.920 | And we saw this through phosphorylation

00:40:11.480 | of the binding protein 40BP1,

00:40:13.200 | which is a proxy for mTOR activation.

00:40:15.440 | And then I said, "Okay, well, maybe leucine

00:40:19.540 | "isn't getting into the cell.

00:40:20.760 | "Maybe that's why."

00:40:21.880 | So, we looked at intracellular leucine,

00:40:23.880 | followed the exact path of plasma leucine.

00:40:26.680 | And so, then I kept rerunning the plasma data,

00:40:28.420 | over and over, I probably ran it five times, right?

00:40:31.520 | And Lehman finally calls me into his office one day,

00:40:33.360 | and he goes, "So, where do we stand

00:40:34.180 | "with this duration experiment?"

00:40:36.240 | And I said, "Yeah, it's almost done.

00:40:38.340 | "I just, I gotta run the data again,

00:40:40.420 | "'cause the plasma data's gotta be wrong."

00:40:42.580 | And he, I saw his little eyebrow go up, you know?

00:40:46.760 | And he goes, "Why do you think that?

00:40:49.340 | "Let me see your data."

00:40:51.080 | He goes, "Your standard air bars are good.

00:40:52.860 | "This looks to be relatively tight data.

00:40:54.940 | "How's your technique?"

00:40:57.540 | And I'm going through how I, you know,

00:41:00.120 | all the steps to analyze plasmino acids.

00:41:03.600 | It's not like CSI, by the way, everybody.

00:41:05.040 | You don't just take a pipette,

00:41:06.080 | put something in a centrifuge,

00:41:07.160 | and all of a sudden you get back data.

00:41:08.240 | There's many steps in here.

00:41:11.720 | And so, I showed him all that, and he goes,

00:41:14.520 | "You know, it sounds like you are trying

00:41:17.460 | "to get the data to fit your conclusion,

00:41:21.580 | "and what you need to do is change your conclusion

00:41:24.000 | "to fit the data."

00:41:25.840 | And that one line, again, it just opened my whole world

00:41:30.840 | up to one, if I'm wrong, okay, cool.

00:41:35.120 | Like, I care more about getting the right answer

00:41:36.880 | than being right, and that's why we were talking earlier.

00:41:40.920 | I'm like, there's so much stuff that I just don't believe.

00:41:43.680 | I want to see 10, 20 studies before I go, "Yeah," you know.

00:41:47.120 | And the other thing I'll tell people is,

00:41:48.160 | "Hey, I don't plant my flag real strong very often,

00:41:53.160 | "so when you see me do it, I'm not saying I'm not fallible,

00:41:58.260 | "but if you see me do it, you probably should pay attention,

00:42:01.320 | "'cause I don't usually do that."

00:42:03.620 | - I love that description, but now my curiosity is piqued,

00:42:06.320 | and you got to tell me.

00:42:07.360 | So, if 90 minutes after ingesting protein,

00:42:10.520 | protein synthesis peaks,

00:42:11.860 | and then it drops to baseline at three hours,

00:42:13.720 | but leucine, one of the key amino acids in mTOR,

00:42:16.920 | which is in the pathway of cellular growth

00:42:18.920 | and protein synthesis, are still elevated at three hours,

00:42:22.040 | what is the conclusion that explains the discrepancy?

00:42:24.920 | - Yeah, so, we actually looked for this for years.

00:42:27.840 | So, a few things.

00:42:29.980 | There was some other studies that supported that.

00:42:31.840 | We called it a refractory response.

00:42:34.000 | Actually, we didn't name it that.

00:42:35.000 | There was another lab that named it that.

00:42:36.920 | Basically, that protein synthesis was becoming refractory

00:42:39.400 | to the signal for protein synthesis.

00:42:43.240 | So, just for real quick,

00:42:45.760 | I'm gonna try and explain this easily.

00:42:47.500 | So, protein synthesis, you know,

00:42:49.740 | this sounds like probably a very abstract thing,

00:42:51.760 | but it's how your body makes more protein,

00:42:53.480 | and whether it's in skeletal muscle,

00:42:55.280 | whether it's in the liver, whatever,

00:42:56.940 | you have your DNA, which is your genetic code, right?

00:43:00.040 | And then, that gets transcribed to an mRNA.

00:43:04.120 | By the way, I'm leaving out a lot of steps here,

00:43:05.400 | but just bear with me.

00:43:07.040 | That mRNA gets translated by a ribosome

00:43:10.640 | into a polypeptide chain or a protein.

00:43:13.720 | So, a ribosome is basically attaching to the mRNA,

00:43:17.600 | and then, based on the mRNA sequence,

00:43:19.420 | is bringing in amino acids to match that sequence.

00:43:21.920 | So, all the proteins in your body

00:43:23.400 | are coded for in your DNA, right?

00:43:25.900 | So, when it comes to this process,

00:43:29.700 | there's a complex called EIF4F,

00:43:32.200 | which acts as a scaffold for the ribosome

00:43:35.000 | to hook on to the mRNA.

00:43:37.480 | And EIF4F, the formation of it,

00:43:40.160 | is basically rate-limited by the association

00:43:43.460 | of two proteins called EIF4E and EIF4G.

00:43:47.560 | And EIF4E is bound by a binding protein, 4ABP1.

00:43:52.560 | And when you stimulate, when leucine stimulates mTOR,

00:43:57.760 | mTOR stimulates the phosphorylation of 4ABP1,

00:44:00.680 | which makes it unavailable for binding with EIF4E.

00:44:05.040 | It can bind to EIF4G.

00:44:07.560 | That EIF4F complex can be made,

00:44:10.280 | brings the ribosome onto the mRNA,

00:44:12.560 | and now it can read, it can translate it.

00:44:14.880 | So, there's a little cellular biology lesson for you.

00:44:17.880 | - Yeah, and if people didn't follow that,

00:44:19.640 | don't worry about it.

00:44:20.840 | What Lane's describing is that the presence

00:44:22.600 | of a bunch of molecules involved in protein synthesis

00:44:25.720 | is necessary but not sufficient for the protein synthesis.

00:44:29.080 | - Right.

00:44:29.920 | - Other things have to happen.

00:44:30.800 | - Correct.

00:44:31.640 | - And apparently, those other things are not happening

00:44:33.560 | after 120 minutes.

00:44:35.800 | - So, another lab called it the muscle-full effect.

00:44:38.920 | Basically, the idea is like once you've initiated

00:44:41.800 | that signal, it kind of runs and then it's done, right?

00:44:45.720 | And just pounding more amino acids into the system

00:44:48.720 | is not going to further stimulate.

00:44:49.840 | In fact, there was a study done back in,

00:44:51.880 | I think it was 2001 by, I want to say by Rennie,

00:44:54.280 | another very well-known protein lab,

00:44:57.200 | and they infused essential amino acids for six hours

00:45:00.000 | and looked at skeletal muscle protein synthesis.

00:45:02.040 | And they found it went up and then came back down

00:45:04.680 | by two hours and then never went back up, right?

00:45:07.880 | - Good experiment.

00:45:08.880 | - Yeah, very interesting.

00:45:09.880 | So, we looked at a bunch of different things.

00:45:13.240 | The only thing we found that perhaps explained it

00:45:16.680 | a little bit, and I'm sure there's other labs

00:45:18.440 | that would argue with me on this,

00:45:19.600 | and again, this is in rat skeletal muscle,

00:45:23.080 | which by the way, is a good model

00:45:24.360 | for human protein metabolism, but still.

00:45:27.280 | We looked at intracellular ATP levels

00:45:29.520 | and actually found that they were declining

00:45:31.600 | kind of in concert with the decline

00:45:33.120 | in muscle protein synthesis.

00:45:34.200 | And muscle protein synthesis is an ATP-dependent process.

00:45:37.480 | But the process of protein turnover

00:45:40.480 | is energetically expensive.

00:45:41.920 | It's one of the reasons that protein

00:45:43.600 | has a higher thermic effect of food.

00:45:46.080 | And so our hypothesis was perhaps

00:45:50.360 | by the effect of protein stimulating protein synthesis

00:45:53.960 | to start this machinery is energetically expensive enough

00:45:58.000 | that eventually you kind of run out of steam.

00:46:01.440 | And so you have the signal there,

00:46:03.640 | but it just kind of ends, right?

00:46:08.040 | Now, there have been other experiments,

00:46:09.280 | like Joran Trommelin just published a paper

00:46:11.240 | a few months ago that got a bunch of feedback.

00:46:14.200 | It was 100 grams of protein

00:46:15.400 | after a resistance training exercise,

00:46:18.760 | and saw that it was basically,

00:46:21.600 | like a lot more of it was used

00:46:22.800 | than we thought would be used.

00:46:23.680 | - Right, because for many decades,

00:46:25.640 | it has been purported, believed, and propagated

00:46:29.560 | that the maximum amount of protein

00:46:31.480 | that you can utilize after a meal is 30 grams.

00:46:34.240 | It became like the holy number.

00:46:36.020 | And this study essentially showed

00:46:38.800 | that more than 30 grams can be used,

00:46:42.960 | not just as energy,

00:46:43.880 | but for the sake of protein synthesis in muscle, correct?

00:46:47.600 | - Yeah.

00:46:48.440 | - And how did that study land with you,

00:46:50.040 | given that it's one study?

00:46:51.880 | Without going into all the details,

00:46:53.960 | did that inspire you to change anything

00:46:55.800 | about your protein intake after training?

00:46:57.880 | - So, what I tell people is I don't make big shifts,

00:47:02.120 | in my opinions, based on single studies.

00:47:04.280 | - Yeah, why does that not surprise me?

00:47:06.360 | - It shimmies me a little bit, right?

00:47:07.720 | So, and even before that study came out,

00:47:10.600 | what I had said is I think protein distribution matters,

00:47:14.580 | but I think it matters much, much less

00:47:17.100 | than total protein intake per day.

00:47:18.560 | 'Cause all we need to do is look at

00:47:19.640 | some of these resistance training studies

00:47:21.300 | with intermittent fasting,

00:47:23.040 | where people are eating all their protein

00:47:25.240 | in an eight-hour window.

00:47:26.400 | And theoretically, you would think

00:47:27.840 | they would get less muscle growth,

00:47:29.800 | especially based on this refractory data,

00:47:31.440 | 'cause less time to stimulate.

00:47:32.940 | But at least in the studies out of Grant Tinsley's lab,

00:47:37.800 | I think there's two studies that were very well done

00:47:39.580 | where we don't see that.

00:47:40.420 | Now, important to point out,

00:47:42.040 | they trained during their feeding window,

00:47:44.000 | and they had three,

00:47:45.960 | they made sure they ate three high-quality,

00:47:48.480 | high-protein meals during that eight-hour time, right?

00:47:51.820 | So, at least in that context,

00:47:54.300 | there was no difference in the amount of lean mass gained

00:47:56.940 | between intermittent fasting groups

00:47:58.580 | versus continuous feeding groups.

00:47:59.940 | - And in the continuous feeding groups,

00:48:02.340 | do you recall what duration

00:48:04.060 | they were eating their meals over?

00:48:05.620 | Was it probably 12 hours or so?

00:48:08.100 | - I don't recall specifically,

00:48:09.700 | but I don't recall an actual defined time.

00:48:12.860 | I'd have to go back and look at it.

00:48:13.680 | - More than eight hours.

00:48:14.520 | - For sure.

00:48:15.580 | - I'm so glad we're landing here

00:48:16.820 | because my first,

00:48:18.780 | let's just call it sort of operational

00:48:21.700 | or actionable question,

00:48:23.220 | which came from, you know,

00:48:26.380 | asking on social media for questions for you,

00:48:29.420 | was many, many people, if not in the thousands,

00:48:33.000 | asked how to make sure that they're getting enough protein

00:48:36.420 | if they're doing something like intermittent fasting.

00:48:38.740 | And I myself fall into this category.

00:48:40.840 | I don't do it for any specific purpose.

00:48:44.260 | This was long before Sachin Panda started doing his work

00:48:46.620 | on time-restricted feeding, AKA intermittent fasting,

00:48:49.180 | but I don't tend to want to eat any food

00:48:51.940 | until about 11 a.m.

00:48:54.300 | Occasionally I wake up hungry, like this morning,

00:48:55.940 | and I had some eggs, I was particularly hungry,

00:48:58.900 | but I think that's representative of a lot of people.

00:49:02.080 | I want hydration and caffeine in the morning.

00:49:04.380 | I want to train in the morning,

00:49:05.500 | and then I want to eat pretty soon after I train.

00:49:08.180 | But what that means is that I'm eating

00:49:10.100 | during an eight to nine hour feeding window.

00:49:13.340 | And if I only manage two meals in there and a snack,

00:49:16.820 | and I can only assimilate, or excuse me,

00:49:18.700 | I can only put 30 grams of protein per meal

00:49:23.020 | toward protein synthesis.

00:49:24.380 | We have to be careful not about using it for energy,

00:49:26.480 | but toward protein synthesis.

00:49:27.980 | Does that mean that I'm not going to hit my target

00:49:31.860 | of one gram of protein per pound of desired lean body mass?

00:49:35.380 | 'Cause I'm 100 kilograms, I weigh about 220 pounds.

00:49:38.420 | I can easily eat 220 grams of protein

00:49:41.500 | in a nine hour period.

00:49:42.460 | Like, give me three ribeyes, I'll eat all three.

00:49:44.620 | I love ribeye steak, right?

00:49:46.500 | But the question is, can I use that?

00:49:48.540 | - So, and I'm going to bring this background

00:49:52.140 | to that particular experiment.

00:49:54.300 | So over time, and when I left grad school,

00:49:58.220 | my position was that it matters.

00:50:01.620 | Protein distribution matters.

00:50:02.920 | So I'll give you the straight down the line

00:50:04.020 | scientific answer, and then I'll give you,

00:50:05.140 | if you inject me with truth serum,

00:50:06.360 | what I really think answer.

00:50:07.700 | And so we did an experiment, again, in rats.

00:50:12.300 | We fed them completely same diets,

00:50:16.060 | same total calories, protein, carbs, fats.

00:50:18.780 | But in one group, they got that pretty much evenly

00:50:21.820 | across three meals, and the other group,

00:50:23.200 | 70% of their protein was coming at their last meal.

00:50:25.500 | And then the other two meals were like 15% protein,

00:50:28.740 | 15% of their daily protein.

00:50:30.940 | And 11 weeks, again, 11 weeks out of a rat's life,

00:50:34.660 | rodents live 18 to 24 months.

00:50:37.720 | That's a big chunk of their life, right?

00:50:40.020 | And we did see about a five to 10% difference

00:50:43.740 | in the weights of the hind limbs in terms of muscle mass.

00:50:47.380 | - In what direction?

00:50:48.900 | - Favoring equal distribution, right?

00:50:51.320 | Now again, hard to repeat that study in humans, right?

00:50:56.180 | And for the duration it's done.

00:50:57.740 | So I came out saying, you know what?

00:51:03.020 | That's actually less than I thought we were going to,

00:51:05.180 | I thought we were going to find

00:51:06.020 | bigger differences than that.

00:51:07.300 | You know, because, I mean, if you're thinking about

00:51:09.140 | number of times you're stimulating protein synthesis,

00:51:11.700 | I mean, one per day versus three per day,

00:51:14.300 | I mean, shouldn't there be like

00:51:16.420 | a pretty significant difference there?

00:51:18.220 | And it was, I mean, it reached the level of significance,

00:51:20.100 | but again, I thought the effect size

00:51:21.640 | was smaller than I thought.

00:51:22.980 | And so I kind of walked out saying, you know what?

00:51:26.300 | Total protein intake is the most important thing per day.

00:51:29.320 | And then if you can distribute it relatively evenly,

00:51:33.720 | that's maybe the last five to 10%, right?

00:51:36.140 | And you've seen some human studies

00:51:37.500 | where it seems to matter, most seem to show

00:51:39.700 | it doesn't really matter that much.

00:51:41.460 | Here's what I think.

00:51:43.340 | If you're measuring an outcome like lean mass,

00:51:45.220 | that doesn't change much in eight weeks, unfortunately.

00:51:47.700 | It's very small differences.

00:51:50.100 | And so I think it's going to be hard to detect that,

00:51:54.700 | but what I'll tell people is,

00:51:57.840 | if you're asking, can you build muscle

00:51:59.380 | in intermittent fasting?

00:52:00.560 | Absolutely.

00:52:01.440 | Can you build a lot of muscle?

00:52:03.180 | Probably.

00:52:05.040 | If you are a bodybuilder, specific population,

00:52:08.760 | or if your goal is to be the most muscular,

00:52:11.000 | strongest human being you can possibly become,

00:52:13.440 | I think you're probably better off

00:52:16.040 | not doing intermittent fasting

00:52:17.880 | just because those last, that last 5%

00:52:23.760 | may make a big difference.

00:52:25.320 | And you're never going to be able to pick that out

00:52:27.260 | of a human randomized control trial in eight weeks.

00:52:29.600 | At least I don't think you will.

00:52:31.800 | And so, again, I don't have any human data

00:52:34.040 | to really back that up,

00:52:35.880 | but just based on what I know about signaling

00:52:39.640 | and the effects we saw on animals,

00:52:42.300 | that's kind of my recommendation.

00:52:43.400 | But most people don't fall in that category.

00:52:45.240 | Most people are just worried about,

00:52:46.240 | hey, I want to look good, build a little bit of muscle.

00:52:48.280 | Intermittent fasting is a perfectly fine tool for doing that.

00:52:50.920 | I will say, you know, obviously we haven't studied

00:52:53.240 | some of the more extreme forms of fasting

00:52:55.180 | in terms of building muscle, right?

00:52:56.540 | Like the 16/8 has been studied,

00:52:59.040 | but like I'm thinking of a study

00:53:00.760 | that was done without resistance training,

00:53:02.720 | alternate day fasting versus continuous

00:53:04.680 | kind of normal feeding.

00:53:05.760 | - One day no eating, next day eat.

00:53:07.280 | - Right, so they did- - Brutal.

00:53:08.520 | - They did- - Or at least for somebody like me.

00:53:10.360 | I can't think of anything worse.

00:53:11.440 | I'd rather fast for three days in a row

00:53:14.480 | and then eat for, you know, four days in a row

00:53:17.180 | simply because I know that by day two,

00:53:18.720 | it's probably going to get easier, not harder,

00:53:20.680 | but on-off fasting eating has got to be just torturous.

00:53:24.280 | - So the way they did it was they did,

00:53:25.840 | the continuous group was getting 75%

00:53:27.680 | of their maintenance calories per day, so in a deficit.

00:53:30.240 | And then the alternate day group was doing 150%

00:53:33.160 | and then zero, right?

00:53:34.280 | So you're getting an average of 75.

00:53:36.680 | And they actually saw differences in lean mass

00:53:39.320 | at the end of that study.

00:53:40.160 | The continuous feeding group lost less lean mass

00:53:43.740 | than the alternate day fasting group.

00:53:45.120 | So that's only one study

00:53:46.680 | and it didn't have resistance training.

00:53:47.880 | It's possible that a resistance training

00:53:49.400 | could attenuate some of that stuff.

00:53:51.200 | But what I'll say is, you know,

00:53:53.400 | the more extreme forms of fasting

00:53:55.080 | probably aren't optimal for lean mass, right?

00:53:57.960 | - Also, can you imagine training

00:54:00.160 | on a day of complete fasting?

00:54:02.160 | After three hours after that, you're going to be dying.

00:54:04.540 | And then you can say, well,

00:54:05.380 | you could just train on the days when you eat,

00:54:06.700 | but then if you ever train legs hard, which I know you do,

00:54:10.600 | or if anyone does, and then the next day,

00:54:12.320 | you're not going to eat anything.

00:54:13.800 | The day after training legs properly,

00:54:16.320 | my appetite's increased.

00:54:18.240 | - Yeah, so I think this is where the rubber

00:54:20.480 | kind of meets the road in terms of straight down the line,

00:54:23.040 | the randomized control trials say this,

00:54:24.800 | but I still do something a little bit different, right?

00:54:27.840 | Because the randomized control trials say,

00:54:29.880 | eh, protein distribution doesn't really seem to matter,

00:54:32.040 | right?

00:54:33.320 | But again, you inject me a true serum,

00:54:36.200 | I think it probably does matter a little bit, right?

00:54:38.200 | Now, does it matter as much as total protein?

00:54:40.320 | Absolutely not.

00:54:41.600 | That is by far the biggest lever.

00:54:43.680 | But again, if my context is I want to become

00:54:46.820 | the most muscular, strongest human being I can be,

00:54:48.800 | which I do, 'cause that's where I compete,

00:54:51.080 | I'm going to distribute my protein

00:54:53.760 | probably over four to five meals per day, right?

00:54:55.840 | And so for you, just personally,

00:54:57.920 | what time of day do you wake up

00:55:01.280 | and when's your first meal?

00:55:02.800 | - So, well, it's summer right now,

00:55:04.080 | so kids are off of school.

00:55:05.040 | So we're usually getting up around like 7.30,

00:55:07.560 | eight o'clock in the morning.

00:55:08.880 | And my first meal is usually within an hour.

00:55:12.440 | And then I usually eat within an hour of going to bed,

00:55:15.760 | and then I'll have two or three meals in between those.

00:55:18.640 | So usually I have about four meals a day.

00:55:21.680 | Sometimes I'll have five, if it's just a longer day

00:55:24.040 | or just how my timing kind of goes

00:55:25.760 | or whatever.

00:55:26.600 | - And does each one of your meals include

00:55:28.800 | approximately 30 plus grams of quality protein,

00:55:32.320 | some starchy carbohydrate, fibrous carbohydrate,

00:55:35.680 | and some fat?

00:55:37.640 | - I mean, sometimes they end up being like

00:55:40.080 | mostly protein or whatnot, but for the most part,

00:55:43.320 | there's a mix in each one.

00:55:45.580 | And usually around 50 grams of protein at a meal.

00:55:48.480 | About 235 grams of protein a day.

00:55:52.560 | Some people would argue that,

00:55:53.960 | oh, that's more than you need.

00:55:55.120 | The researchers shown that 1.6 grams per kg

00:55:57.720 | maxes out the response.

00:55:59.240 | Here's the thing.

00:56:00.760 | And again, this is where like scientific experiments

00:56:03.440 | are big blunt instruments, okay?

00:56:05.880 | They will tell you what not to do more often

00:56:07.720 | than they will tell you what to do, okay?

00:56:09.800 | When it comes to protein, my personal opinion,

00:56:14.560 | and this is just, I guess, a little bit of intuition

00:56:16.840 | based off of 20 years of studying this stuff,

00:56:19.800 | is that I don't know if there's an actual amount of protein

00:56:23.200 | that maxes out the protein synthesis response.

00:56:25.960 | I would bet, if I was a betting man,

00:56:29.360 | that it's kind of an asymptote.

00:56:31.040 | You're familiar with?

00:56:32.000 | Yeah.

00:56:32.840 | So, you're--

00:56:33.960 | - Not everyone's watching.

00:56:35.020 | I just drew an asymptote, an asymptote plot.

00:56:38.640 | But for those not watching, just think about

00:56:40.240 | a plot quickly rising very, very high

00:56:44.160 | and then essentially stays stable at the high level.

00:56:46.800 | - Yeah.

00:56:48.360 | - Maybe with a slight bit of taper.

00:56:49.800 | - Yeah, so it's easier to explain

00:56:52.080 | if it's going towards zero.

00:56:53.300 | So, an asymptote might be, okay, you start out,

00:56:55.760 | you have 10, then five, then two and a half.

00:56:58.440 | - Okay, so you're running in the opposite direction.

00:56:59.840 | - Right.

00:57:00.680 | - Still asymptote going from high to low.

00:57:01.600 | - Right.

00:57:02.420 | - So, asymptote can go from low to high,

00:57:03.260 | it can go from high to low.

00:57:04.100 | - Correct.

00:57:04.920 | So, I'm trying to explain it 'cause it makes more sense

00:57:06.480 | when people kind of go this way.

00:57:08.700 | You never reach zero,

00:57:10.400 | but it keeps getting incrementally closer.

00:57:12.040 | On the other end, I don't think protein synthesis

00:57:14.360 | ever maxes out.

00:57:15.280 | I just think the increment of increase becomes so small

00:57:18.360 | that practically there's no difference

00:57:19.880 | and you wouldn't see a difference in outcome, right?

00:57:22.080 | And so, I think that there's debate over,

00:57:25.840 | is it 1.6 grams per kg, 2.4 grams per kg?

00:57:29.440 | And there's even been a meta regression

00:57:32.320 | that showed up to 3.3 grams per kg had benefits.

00:57:36.220 | I think a lot of this is with protein synthesis,

00:57:39.400 | you're looking for small differences between small numbers.

00:57:43.280 | It's not a very sensitive analysis

00:57:45.240 | to be quite honest with you.

00:57:47.480 | And again, we would never be able to pick out

00:57:52.140 | those differences.

00:57:52.980 | And I'm thinking about, there was a study by Stu Phillips,

00:57:54.520 | if people don't know who Stu Phillips is,

00:57:56.880 | he's the best researcher going

00:57:58.560 | in protein metabolism right now.

00:58:00.200 | But one of the best, so I don't wanna take anybody off.

00:58:04.860 | And he did a study probably 15 years ago

00:58:08.200 | where they gave people different levels of egg protein.

00:58:12.040 | And they looked at five, 10, 20 and 40 grams of egg protein.

00:58:16.960 | And their conclusion was that 20 grams of egg protein

00:58:19.000 | maximize the protein synthesis response.

00:58:21.000 | But that's because straight down the line,

00:58:23.600 | if there's a p-value of more than 0.05,

00:58:26.140 | you can't say there's a difference, right?

00:58:28.120 | But if you looked at the absolute difference

00:58:29.760 | between 20 and 40 grams, I think it was like 11%.

00:58:33.040 | And if you look at the graph,

00:58:36.120 | it almost looks like the start of an asymptote, right?

00:58:38.960 | Now this was one study, wasn't a huge subject number,

00:58:42.220 | but that's kind of where my personal thoughts land on it,

00:58:44.940 | that there's, that kind of also support this,

00:58:47.640 | okay, 100 grams in a meal, you know,

00:58:50.600 | could still be utilized,

00:58:52.120 | is I'm not sure if there's a max out.

00:58:55.020 | I think there's a practical max out

00:58:56.800 | where you get to a point where,

00:58:58.360 | hey, you're like slamming down 50 grams more protein

00:59:00.940 | for 0.0001% more protein synthesis, it doesn't make sense.

00:59:05.120 | But yeah, we'll never be able to,

00:59:08.960 | I doubt we'll be able to pick those numbers out

00:59:10.800 | in actual scientific experiments.

00:59:12.280 | And the other thing to keep in mind

00:59:13.960 | with this whole protein metabolism picture

00:59:16.020 | is we're really only talking about

00:59:17.020 | one side of this equation.

00:59:18.840 | So net gain or loss of skeletal muscle mass

00:59:23.100 | is the balance between protein synthesis

00:59:26.440 | and protein degradation.

00:59:28.420 | And most of us protein researchers

00:59:30.700 | just kind of stick our fingers in our ears

00:59:32.660 | and go la, la, la, la when it comes to protein degradation

00:59:35.460 | because it's so incredibly hard to measure.

00:59:38.300 | And so, yeah, like when we start

00:59:40.860 | to put all that stuff together,

00:59:42.900 | it's like now this picture gets really complicated.

00:59:44.860 | So what I tell people when it comes to that kind of stuff is

00:59:47.860 | listen, you could really get into the weeds on this stuff.

00:59:53.340 | The big rocks are about a gram per pound of body weight.

00:59:56.300 | If you want to really, for all intents and purposes,

00:59:59.220 | max out the anabolic response, you're going to be fine.

01:00:02.420 | - One gram per pound of body weight,

01:00:03.900 | which is what Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

01:00:05.580 | also essentially recommended.

01:00:07.300 | - Right, I'm probably like, you know,

01:00:10.020 | real sticklers might be like,

01:00:11.460 | no, it's actually more like 0.7 or 0.8.

01:00:13.360 | And then it's, well, it's actually based on lean mass,

01:00:15.980 | which I agree with.

01:00:16.820 | But just for all intents and purposes,

01:00:18.820 | you could say, you know, your body weight,

01:00:20.500 | ideal body weight, whatever it is,

01:00:22.860 | that number is going to be very sufficient

01:00:25.620 | for maxing out muscle building for the majority of people.

01:00:28.820 | - And we should probably point out

01:00:29.940 | not just for muscle building, unless you disagree,

01:00:33.700 | and feel free to, of course,

01:00:36.100 | not that I need to tell you that.

01:00:37.740 | Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, when she was here,

01:00:40.140 | made a really key point,

01:00:42.860 | which is that ingesting sufficient quality protein each day

01:00:46.820 | isn't just about building muscle,

01:00:48.980 | even for folks that don't want to build muscle,

01:00:50.580 | and perhaps even particularly for women

01:00:53.820 | who assume that, you know,

01:00:56.900 | building muscle can be a runaway process

01:00:59.100 | that maybe they're going to build too much muscle.

01:01:00.740 | That's a false assumption, of course,

01:01:02.940 | that ingesting one gram of protein per pound of body weight

01:01:05.900 | or ideal body weight is going to be beneficial

01:01:09.020 | because it's going to improve muscle quality,

01:01:12.460 | one's own muscle quality,

01:01:13.620 | the health of the muscular tissue.

01:01:14.900 | And then she did an excellent job

01:01:16.740 | of relating the health of muscular tissue,

01:01:18.940 | skeletal muscle, that is,

01:01:20.580 | to overall health and longevity.

01:01:22.780 | So I just raise that because I know

01:01:24.940 | that many people listening to this

01:01:26.380 | probably want to add a little bit of muscle here or there.

01:01:29.100 | Some perhaps want to keep the muscle

01:01:30.300 | they've gotten loose fat.

01:01:31.580 | And some, of course, want to add a lot of muscle.

01:01:33.660 | But it sounds like the recommendation is always the same.

01:01:36.260 | Since we need to eat sooner or later,

01:01:38.900 | one gram of quality protein per pound of lean body mass

01:01:42.420 | or current body weight or desired body weight,

01:01:45.060 | that's going to be a good starting place.

01:01:46.860 | - Yeah, for sure.

01:01:47.700 | And I think I would tend to agree with her.

01:01:51.580 | You know, the process, because when you eat protein,

01:01:54.880 | you're not just going to start laying down slabs

01:01:57.460 | of lean tissue just from eating protein.

01:01:59.080 | There has to be a stimulus, which is resistance training.

01:02:02.100 | Or some people would argue you could stretch really hard

01:02:04.700 | and get the same thing,

01:02:05.580 | which there may be some evidence of that.

01:02:07.460 | - With weights and lift them in between stretches.

01:02:09.700 | No, I'm just kidding, which is basically weight lifting.

01:02:11.940 | - There actually are studies now

01:02:13.020 | where they like put people in like really kind of

01:02:14.660 | hardcore stretching for several minutes

01:02:17.700 | and they actually see hypertrophy with it.

01:02:20.240 | Yeah, very interesting.

01:02:21.080 | We could talk about those if you wanted.

01:02:22.260 | But the point is either way, it's mechanical tension, right?

01:02:25.960 | So that's the stimulus, to build muscle,

01:02:28.060 | to lay down lean tissue.

01:02:31.340 | But the process of remodeling is probably beneficial

01:02:35.500 | for multiple reasons.

01:02:36.820 | So when you eat protein, like we said,

01:02:39.380 | synthesis goes up, degradation goes up, right?

01:02:41.740 | Because you're stimulating that process.

01:02:43.040 | You're stimulating protein turnover.

01:02:44.700 | One, that's relatively energetically expensive,

01:02:47.300 | all things being equal.

01:02:48.140 | So that's where the thermic effect of protein comes from.

01:02:51.220 | 'Cause people say, well, it's the urea cycle

01:02:53.080 | and this and that.

01:02:53.920 | Most of those ATPs you get back

01:02:57.500 | in different phases of that cycle.

01:02:58.700 | Really, in my opinion, the thermic effect of protein

01:03:01.860 | is due to like kind of activation of this futile cycle

01:03:04.720 | of you're building more protein,

01:03:06.740 | but then you're also breaking down more protein.

01:03:08.700 | And so part of that is you are remodeling.

01:03:12.740 | You are making sure that that protein is higher quality

01:03:16.800 | in that tissue by continuously breaking it down

01:03:20.620 | and building it back up.

01:03:22.380 | And so I would probably agree with that.

01:03:25.120 | And then it's, again,

01:03:27.620 | even if you're at a resistance training program

01:03:29.600 | where you're not really building much more muscle anymore,

01:03:32.160 | the process of remodeling is probably good for you.

01:03:35.980 | And I would just say,

01:03:37.260 | try to ally some of these concerns

01:03:40.200 | from people who are concerned about getting too much muscle.

01:03:44.060 | So I have been lifting really hard

01:03:45.620 | consistently for 25 years.

01:03:47.220 | I am very comfortable with saying I train harder

01:03:49.280 | than almost anybody else you can possibly imagine.

01:03:51.860 | And anybody who has trained around me will back that up,

01:03:56.180 | back me up in the comments.

01:03:57.540 | I train very hard.

01:03:59.980 | And in a shirt, I look like an athletic guy who lifts.

01:04:04.920 | I don't look like a monster, you know?

01:04:07.500 | Like you might see pictures of me

01:04:09.740 | when I was a bodybuilding show and like very, very lean,

01:04:11.860 | and that looks, you know, over the top.

01:04:13.780 | But for the most part, I just look kind of athletic.

01:04:17.220 | And I've spent my entire adult life

01:04:18.620 | trying to get too big, right?

01:04:20.260 | So for most people,

01:04:23.220 | unless you're on performance enhancing drugs,

01:04:26.180 | or you just have incredible genetics,

01:04:29.660 | that's not gonna happen.

01:04:31.300 | And if it starts to happen,

01:04:34.300 | just back off on your lifting, easy fix.

01:04:37.360 | So yeah, I think most people's concern with that

01:04:40.220 | is a little bit misplaced.

01:04:41.980 | And the other thing I'll tell people is like,

01:04:43.720 | hey, some of these like fitness,

01:04:45.320 | like especially like for women,

01:04:47.180 | a lot of these fitness models you follow,

01:04:49.580 | they show you certain workouts they do,

01:04:52.420 | they built that physique by lifting weights, right?

01:04:56.840 | And you're thinking that's a toned feature.

01:05:02.260 | Well, that person is actually pretty muscular, right?

01:05:05.580 | And so again, especially for women, there are exceptions.

01:05:09.980 | Some people, some women have very great genetics

01:05:12.100 | for building muscle.

01:05:13.380 | They usually wind up in track and field,

01:05:15.380 | that sort of thing.

01:05:16.340 | But it's very hard to get too muscular for a woman.

01:05:21.960 | And what I'll say is like, you know,

01:05:24.220 | typically muscle looks good,

01:05:26.460 | and fat is what makes you kind of look bulky, you know?

01:05:29.300 | So again, I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush,

01:05:32.500 | but I would say that you don't really have too much

01:05:34.980 | to worry about when it comes to getting too muscular.

01:05:38.700 | - I'd like to take a brief break

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01:05:51.540 | Now I and others on the podcast have talked a lot

01:05:53.700 | about the critical importance of hydration

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01:05:57.820 | Research shows that even a slight degree of dehydration

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01:06:12.460 | of all the cells in your body,

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01:06:50.780 | Since we're sort of in this realm of protein,

01:06:53.420 | maybe we build out from there,

01:06:55.140 | 'cause a lot of questions related

01:06:56.680 | to something akin to the following.

01:06:59.920 | So, okay, so somebody strives to get one gram

01:07:03.700 | of quality protein per pound of body weight per day.

01:07:06.380 | And I realized that whether somebody follows

01:07:11.400 | a pseudo-intermittent fasting thing

01:07:13.200 | where their first meal does around 11,

01:07:15.640 | and they finish up eating around 8 p.m.,

01:07:18.680 | or a more traditional eating schedule

01:07:20.760 | really is just the addition of one more meal,

01:07:22.720 | like in the morning.

01:07:23.880 | It's like whether or not you eat breakfast.

01:07:25.220 | And of course, some people shift it the other way.

01:07:26.620 | They start with breakfast and they don't eat dinner.

01:07:28.260 | But I would argue that in order to,

01:07:31.020 | if you have kids or a social life of any kind,

01:07:33.860 | most people can deal with sitting across the table

01:07:37.300 | with someone just having a cup of coffee for breakfast,

01:07:39.700 | but it's sort of awkward.

01:07:41.420 | You limit yourself a lot in life

01:07:42.700 | if you can't eat dinner with other people.

01:07:44.780 | I don't know, at least-

01:07:45.820 | - And that's, again, where the rubber meets the road

01:07:47.900 | with what is practically doable,

01:07:49.660 | 'cause there've been some of these

01:07:50.660 | like circadian rhythm studies that suggest,

01:07:52.660 | well, maybe early time-restricted feeding

01:07:54.620 | is better than late time-restricted feeding.

01:07:56.940 | The more high-quality, more rigorously controlled,

01:08:00.460 | randomized controlled trials are coming out now

01:08:02.020 | seems to show that it doesn't really make a big difference.

01:08:05.540 | And some of the, again,

01:08:07.660 | the measurements you use matter, right?

01:08:09.120 | So there was actually a very recent study

01:08:11.500 | where they looked at 12 weeks.

01:08:12.860 | They provided all the food to participants,

01:08:15.260 | equal in protein, calories, the whole deal.

01:08:18.620 | The only difference was one group

01:08:20.260 | was eating 80% of their calories

01:08:22.620 | before 1 p.m. and they had a eight-hour

01:08:25.380 | feeding window in total.

01:08:26.820 | The other group had a 12-hour feeding window

01:08:29.380 | and were eating over 50% of their calories

01:08:32.620 | after 5 p.m., I wanna say.

01:08:35.580 | And so really, based on some of the chrononutrition stuff

01:08:38.660 | we've seen from some of the lesser well-controlled trials,

01:08:41.560 | they were expecting to see differences

01:08:44.140 | in glucose metabolism and whatnot,

01:08:45.980 | and they just didn't really see a difference in anything.

01:08:48.820 | And I think the only thing they saw

01:08:51.260 | a little bit of a difference was in fasting blood glucose.

01:08:53.860 | And here's what I tell people.

01:08:55.380 | When you see a difference in fasting blood glucose

01:08:58.300 | but not HbA1c, you're looking at a transient difference.

01:09:02.700 | And what I mean by that is HbA1c is such a great measurement

01:09:06.680 | because it's an area on hemoglobin

01:09:10.340 | that can be glycosylated.

01:09:11.620 | And so that is very dependent on

01:09:14.300 | what is your overall concentration of glucose in the blood

01:09:17.540 | over a 24-hour period of time?

01:09:19.340 | Because it's exposed the entire time

01:09:21.220 | it's in your bloodstream.

01:09:22.100 | So whether you're getting glucose spikes at meals

01:09:25.420 | or you have higher fasting blood glucose,

01:09:26.900 | it's gonna be very reflective

01:09:27.940 | of the overall 24-hour area under the curve, right?

01:09:31.220 | So why do some of these studies see a little bit better

01:09:36.660 | improvement in lowering fasting blood glucose

01:09:38.580 | whereas HbA1c doesn't show up?

01:09:40.760 | Well, think about it.

01:09:42.240 | If somebody is early time-restricted feeding

01:09:44.700 | and they finish most of their food intake before 1 p.m.,

01:09:48.460 | they have an extra six, seven, eight hours

01:09:51.020 | that they're not hardly eating anything.

01:09:53.140 | It doesn't surprise me that the next morning,

01:09:55.540 | because they've technically fasted for longer,

01:09:58.260 | you have a lower blood glucose.

01:09:59.300 | Now, I can't really back this up straight up

01:10:01.900 | 'cause nobody's ever measured it,

01:10:03.360 | but that, I think, is a logical explanation

01:10:06.380 | while you see some of this stuff.

01:10:07.420 | And that's why I tell people

01:10:09.020 | the measurement you take really matters.

01:10:10.620 | I think fasting blood glucose is a useful measurement,

01:10:13.100 | but I put much more value on something like HOMA-IR,

01:10:16.300 | euglycemic clamp, or HbA1c.

01:10:20.220 | So anyways, I think the early versus late time-restricted

01:10:23.980 | is, kind of doesn't matter too much.

01:10:26.220 | - Great, you answered a future question right there.

01:10:29.380 | - See, I've--

01:10:30.540 | - You're telepathic.

01:10:31.940 | - Mm-hmm.

01:10:32.780 | - Uh-huh, that's what you didn't know about 'em.

01:10:34.820 | So the scenario here is whether or not meals

01:10:40.060 | are distributed evenly through the awake day

01:10:44.180 | or stacked a little bit more toward the morning

01:10:47.100 | or stacked a little bit more toward the evening,

01:10:49.580 | if somebody gets that one gram of quality protein

01:10:51.480 | per pound of body weight,

01:10:53.420 | then they need to make up the rest of their calories

01:10:55.780 | with other stuff.

01:10:56.900 | - Mm-hmm.

01:10:57.820 | - And we have, broadly speaking, starches,

01:11:01.180 | fibrous, you know, fruits and vegetables,

01:11:03.820 | starches, and of course, fats.

01:11:05.980 | - Right.

01:11:06.820 | - And weight gain and weight loss,

01:11:09.020 | I think we both would agree is, or weight maintenance,

01:11:12.500 | is going to largely be dictated at this point

01:11:15.220 | by whether or not you consume more calories

01:11:17.500 | than you burn or not.

01:11:19.600 | So assuming somebody's getting that one gram

01:11:21.700 | of quality protein per pound of body weight,

01:11:23.980 | is there any data that support,

01:11:27.140 | or do you believe, just by your own experience,

01:11:29.120 | that there's some value in stacking

01:11:31.660 | the starchy carbohydrates toward the earlier part

01:11:34.860 | of the day versus the later part of the day?

01:11:37.740 | And this has been an ongoing debate.

01:11:39.060 | Like I, for instance, like a nearly pure protein and fat meal

01:11:44.000 | for the first meal, plus maybe a salad,

01:11:45.740 | some fibrous carbohydrates.

01:11:46.900 | And then as they get towards evening,

01:11:48.700 | I like more starches and I actually taper off the protein.

01:11:51.660 | I find, personally, that matches what I need to do

01:11:54.140 | with my brain.

01:11:54.980 | I'm more alert when I'm drinking caffeine

01:11:56.340 | and hydrating on a backdrop

01:11:57.500 | of slightly lowered carbohydrates.

01:11:59.420 | But then as I get towards evening,

01:12:01.080 | taper off the caffeine, of course, for me,

01:12:03.580 | 'cause I want to sleep well,

01:12:04.700 | start ingesting some more starches.

01:12:06.220 | It's not starch heavy, but I sleep like a baby.

01:12:09.020 | But everyone would tell me, and does tell me,

01:12:13.420 | eating starches late in the day is going to make me fat.

01:12:16.140 | Eating starches late in the day

01:12:17.300 | is going to do all sorts of terrible things.

01:12:19.700 | I find the exact opposite for me.

01:12:22.140 | So is there any real evidence

01:12:24.900 | that where one places their starches

01:12:26.740 | throughout the day matters?

01:12:27.780 | And let's just forget resistance training for the moment,

01:12:30.100 | because there is this post-training window

01:12:32.180 | where if I train first thing in the morning,

01:12:34.900 | I will eat starches at that time.

01:12:36.420 | But let's just remove resistance training for the moment.

01:12:39.660 | - So again, we're about rubber meets the road

01:12:41.220 | in practicality versus what hard line research says.

01:12:45.760 | So I am not real convinced at all

01:12:50.460 | that it really matters when you eat your carbohydrates.

01:12:52.900 | - Thank you, thank you, my goodness.

01:12:54.460 | I knew I brought you here today for a reason.

01:12:55.900 | No, I brought you here for many reasons, but-

01:12:58.460 | - Is that my bias has been validated?

01:12:59.780 | I can leave now.

01:13:01.540 | So I really try to get people focused

01:13:03.300 | on the stuff that matters the most, right?

01:13:05.980 | So this is, if we're worried about carbohydrate timing,

01:13:09.740 | even if there are differences,

01:13:11.040 | we are zoomed way in on the blade of grass, right?

01:13:13.900 | We're not zooming out all the way.

01:13:15.980 | And I think, hey, if somebody likes

01:13:19.740 | to eat more carbohydrate in the morning

01:13:21.260 | and that fits their lifestyle,

01:13:22.680 | and that is easy for them to continue to do,

01:13:24.860 | then I would say do that.

01:13:25.980 | - And could I add, in terms of not focusing

01:13:29.260 | on a blade of grass,

01:13:30.100 | but something that I consider a major lever,

01:13:32.840 | if eating fewer carbohydrates in the afternoon

01:13:35.340 | and evening doesn't impede your sleep, then you're okay.

01:13:37.660 | But I would argue if anything is interfering

01:13:41.140 | with your sleep on a consistent basis,

01:13:42.820 | you've got a serious problem.

01:13:44.420 | - Yeah, so there are no solutions, only trade-offs, right?

01:13:49.220 | And when it comes to carbohydrate intake,

01:13:52.460 | you'll hear people say, the data's all over the place,

01:13:55.180 | okay, in terms of like timing and how people feel.

01:13:57.400 | Some people say, well, I feel sleepy after I have carbs.

01:13:59.260 | Some people have, I feel great after I have carbs.

01:14:01.540 | Like I'm ready to go lift.

01:14:02.800 | I have a big carb meal before I go lift, you know.

01:14:05.660 | It seems to be all over the map.

01:14:08.080 | Now, here's the thing what I'll tell people,

01:14:10.520 | because people ask me how I eat.

01:14:12.000 | People have wanted me to do a full day of eating video,

01:14:15.040 | and I've kind of put it off for a while,

01:14:16.440 | 'cause I'm like, so much of the stuff I do,

01:14:19.640 | I'm not gonna give you guys a citation for, you know,

01:14:21.840 | and I know you're gonna want it.

01:14:23.240 | And some of the stuff I do,

01:14:25.560 | 'cause I just like doing it that way, right?

01:14:27.640 | Like I grew up in the era of bodybuilding magazines

01:14:30.360 | where they said you gotta have a big carbohydrate intake

01:14:33.100 | and a big meal before you go train

01:14:34.420 | and a big meal after you train.

01:14:36.100 | So guess what I did?

01:14:37.540 | I got in the habit of eating like that,

01:14:39.540 | and it still sticks to this day.

01:14:41.140 | I don't try to tell people it's better doing it that way.

01:14:43.660 | Plenty of people have told me,

01:14:45.640 | hey, I don't feel good with a lot of my stomach

01:14:48.740 | when I go train.

01:14:49.860 | Or if I have a carb heavy meal in the morning, I feel tired.

01:14:52.860 | The data doesn't really support that in terms of like,

01:14:56.500 | you know, on an average response.

01:14:58.100 | But if you know that you feel that way,

01:15:00.400 | then by all means avoid, right?

01:15:02.240 | Like there's plenty, I remember one time I,

01:15:05.800 | so I used to go to a massage therapist in Tampa

01:15:08.880 | who would do cupping,

01:15:09.840 | and there's really no data to back up

01:15:11.640 | the efficacy of cupping.

01:15:12.880 | - Is that right?

01:15:13.720 | - Yeah, not much, but she did it.

01:15:16.280 | I liked the way it felt.

01:15:17.520 | And I'm like, okay, whatever.

01:15:18.800 | So I posted a picture of me flexing one time, you know,

01:15:21.600 | and there's the cup marks all over,

01:15:23.480 | and everybody's like going crazy.

01:15:25.200 | Like, how could you do this?

01:15:27.220 | I'm like, hey, hey, hey, hey, wait a second.

01:15:30.040 | I never said this does this,

01:15:31.600 | and I never made any claims about it.

01:15:34.200 | She does it, and I like the way it feels.

01:15:36.120 | I'm not saying it does anything.

01:15:37.480 | Actually, one of the things about being a scientist

01:15:39.000 | is like now I'm impossible to placebo,

01:15:40.600 | which is really annoying,

01:15:41.660 | 'cause I would love to be able to placebo myself

01:15:43.160 | a little bit more.

01:15:44.000 | - 'Cause placebo effect is powerful.

01:15:45.240 | - It's powerful, and it's one of the,

01:15:46.360 | I was telling you earlier before we started filming,

01:15:47.920 | I'm like, it's one of the reasons

01:15:48.800 | I just don't believe a lot of stuff,

01:15:50.600 | because I know how powerful the power of belief is.

01:15:53.440 | I mean, you had Sean Mackey on here.

01:15:56.240 | Your beliefs about pain change your pain,

01:15:59.380 | like actually change how much pain you get.

01:16:02.280 | It changes your pain experience.

01:16:03.660 | So, one of the things I've become big on recently is,

01:16:06.740 | hey, what happens in the mind affects the body,

01:16:08.780 | and what happens in the body affects the mind.

01:16:11.000 | So, just because I don't have a randomized control trial

01:16:13.820 | to support something,

01:16:15.180 | if we know the RCTs don't say it's worse, right,

01:16:19.580 | then you do whatever you like, right?

01:16:21.740 | And I think a lot of people get bent out of shape

01:16:23.500 | when I say, well, you know,

01:16:24.420 | when they control the variables that need to be controlled,

01:16:26.300 | there's no difference between intermittent fasting

01:16:27.860 | or just regular old calorie restriction,

01:16:30.960 | or there's no difference between low-fat diets

01:16:32.700 | and high-fat diets.

01:16:33.840 | What people hear is, low-carb sucks.

01:16:37.180 | Intermittent fasting sucks.

01:16:38.300 | He said they don't work.

01:16:39.860 | No, no, no.

01:16:41.180 | This is great.

01:16:42.100 | This is great news for everybody.

01:16:43.500 | It means you have all the tools at your disposal,

01:16:46.580 | and you get to pick the one

01:16:48.340 | that fits in your lifestyle best,

01:16:50.540 | because that is what makes the difference,

01:16:53.340 | is what your overall lifestyle looks like,

01:16:55.700 | and we have way too many people worrying about the minutiae

01:16:59.860 | who just don't even exercise on a consistent basis,

01:17:03.060 | or they don't sleep well on a consistent basis,

01:17:04.900 | or they don't manage their psychological stress well,

01:17:07.260 | or they try to be perfect with their nutrition,

01:17:10.540 | then they fall off the deep end,

01:17:11.860 | and what I'm saying is, no, be imperfect,

01:17:14.620 | but be consistent with what you do, right?

01:17:16.820 | And so, for you, obviously carbs at night

01:17:19.280 | have not made you fat.

01:17:20.620 | Like, I have eyeballs,

01:17:21.580 | so we can just dispel that myth right now.

01:17:23.300 | - Yeah, I would say eating the way I eat now,

01:17:26.200 | I'm leaner at 49, even than I was 10 years ago,

01:17:30.220 | or 10 years before that.

01:17:31.060 | I was pretty lean then,

01:17:32.060 | and I don't put a ton of attention to tracking calories,

01:17:35.460 | although, and I want to be very, very clear,

01:17:38.340 | I was not paid to say this.

01:17:40.660 | I've purchased and use Lane's Carbon app.

01:17:43.780 | He happens to be wearing a shirt that says Carbon today,

01:17:45.660 | but I've talked about this before

01:17:46.940 | on other podcasts and social media,

01:17:49.860 | and it's absolutely true

01:17:51.580 | that there's no endorsement relationship,

01:17:54.420 | but I love the app

01:17:56.500 | because that was really the first time,

01:17:59.720 | probably since college,

01:18:00.980 | 'cause I started lifting when I was 16.

01:18:02.580 | Running and lifting has always been my thing

01:18:04.540 | since I was 16,

01:18:05.380 | but since college that I used a tool,

01:18:09.780 | in this case, Carbon, to basically track what I'm eating,

01:18:14.240 | like exactly what I'm eating,

01:18:15.540 | and what I like about it

01:18:16.580 | is that I can just click on different boxes of things

01:18:19.140 | like within the app,

01:18:21.460 | and really, it makes it very easy.

01:18:24.380 | Say, oh, like I ate this thing,

01:18:26.540 | white rice from this package,

01:18:27.860 | and it generally knows products, it knows brands,

01:18:32.380 | and it did a really good job of letting me check in

01:18:35.580 | and just see how many calories I was consuming,

01:18:38.060 | how much protein, how much fat, and from what sources,

01:18:40.540 | but one of the major takeaways

01:18:41.760 | that at least I got from Carbon

01:18:43.880 | was that you can arrange your diet

01:18:45.620 | any number of different ways.

01:18:46.540 | In fact, it has like a really nice little slider

01:18:48.340 | where you can put in,

01:18:50.300 | you want to eat more carbohydrates and less protein even,

01:18:52.460 | or you want to have a vegetarian diet, which I don't.

01:18:55.180 | I'm an omnivore.

01:18:56.220 | I'm an omnivore.

01:18:57.060 | My dad's Argentine, I like meat.

01:18:59.020 | I like meat.

01:18:59.860 | In fact, I don't even really like fish that much,

01:19:01.400 | or chicken, I just like eating meat and eggs,

01:19:04.140 | those are my preferred sources, and whey protein.

01:19:06.660 | Okay, fine.

01:19:08.180 | But you can arrange things

01:19:09.420 | within the context of different types of diets,

01:19:11.780 | and I think there's real value

01:19:13.480 | to tracking precisely what one eats

01:19:17.260 | for even short periods of time.

01:19:19.060 | And then I confess, I stopped using the app for it,

01:19:21.420 | but then I went back to it,

01:19:23.420 | and not because things want to drift.

01:19:24.800 | I think some people really need that consistent checking.

01:19:27.180 | Other people need to perhaps

01:19:30.700 | just kind of eyeball it for themselves.

01:19:32.980 | But for me, I've found that knowing exactly what I'm doing

01:19:36.740 | for some period of time

01:19:38.260 | allows me to explore things in a way that's really effective.

01:19:42.060 | And so I just want to give a nod to Carbon,

01:19:45.840 | and I don't do product endorsements on this podcast,

01:19:48.300 | I do ad reads and that kind of thing for things I love,

01:19:51.220 | but I say that because I think it lands squarely

01:19:54.620 | in the context of what we're talking about,

01:19:55.980 | which is that I know what works for me.

01:19:59.700 | I also know that some people really love

01:20:02.420 | like a giant carb meal in the morning.

01:20:05.340 | Some people don't like meat.

01:20:06.540 | Some people, and I think what's so beautiful

01:20:08.540 | about the way that you've been talking

01:20:09.860 | about science and nutrition in particular

01:20:11.580 | over the last few years and still here now,

01:20:13.980 | is that you don't really seem to care

01:20:16.600 | whether or not people are vegan, vegetarian,

01:20:18.400 | omnivore, or even carnivore, dare I say.

01:20:21.160 | It's just a matter of how people are couching the advice.

01:20:24.440 | - For sure.

01:20:25.280 | - And the reason I keep coming back to this

01:20:26.240 | is that I really think that you, this discussion,

01:20:29.120 | but you in particular are best poised in this whole field

01:20:32.680 | of public facing health, nutrition advice

01:20:35.920 | to really change the way that the messaging occurs

01:20:38.960 | and the way that people hear that messaging.

01:20:40.600 | And I say that with the utmost respect.

01:20:44.020 | - That means a lot to me, thank you.

01:20:45.060 | - Because most people are not going to go read

01:20:46.740 | the meta-analyses.

01:20:48.300 | And most people don't know how to parse data.

01:20:51.860 | But I think that paying attention to the words

01:20:55.060 | that are spoken right before the advice should be,

01:20:58.300 | we need to think, come up with something like,

01:20:59.820 | that's like the Norton method.

01:21:02.340 | Pay attention to the words provided right before the advice.

01:21:05.580 | - Yeah, I think how you say it makes all the difference.

01:21:10.880 | And even, take somebody I've had conflict on social media

01:21:15.560 | with, which is Paul Saldino,

01:21:17.040 | which when he would say something like,

01:21:19.840 | "Well, I cut vegetables out of my diet

01:21:22.480 | "and I felt like my eczema got better."

01:21:25.000 | Okay, that's your experience.

01:21:26.360 | You can't go, on average,

01:21:28.360 | that's definitely not reflected in the research.

01:21:31.260 | But hey, if you know that you did this thing

01:21:33.760 | and you felt better, that's fine.

01:21:35.140 | But how we're overgeneralizing to the population

01:21:38.080 | is the problem, right?

01:21:39.780 | And so I think, I mean, again, I'll say,

01:21:43.560 | hey, I calorie cycle a little bit,

01:21:46.960 | which again, you can do using the app, right?

01:21:49.040 | You can change your days and what not,

01:21:50.560 | give you more calories some days,

01:21:51.680 | more calories other days.

01:21:53.360 | And I was, I showed a screenshot of it one time

01:21:55.320 | and somebody goes, "So why do you do it like that?

01:21:57.360 | "Like, is that because it's better this way

01:21:58.940 | "for like muscle growth and fat loss?"

01:22:00.720 | And I go, "No, 'cause I had a get together

01:22:05.540 | "with friends on Saturday

01:22:06.860 | "and I knew I was gonna have a couple of beers

01:22:08.320 | "and I knew that there was gonna be some fatty food.

01:22:10.640 | "So I put 4,000 calories on that day

01:22:12.520 | "and lost the rest of the week."

01:22:14.320 | And they're like, "That's it, that's your reasoning?"

01:22:16.880 | Like, yeah, like compliance is the biggest one.

01:22:19.920 | I will tell people, I'm like,

01:22:21.580 | the reason that I, and we talked about this earlier,

01:22:26.940 | like I have never used performance enhancing drugs.

01:22:29.380 | I've never even, even when pro-hormones were legal,

01:22:31.280 | I didn't use them.

01:22:32.120 | - And you're not on TRT.

01:22:33.240 | - Not on TRT.

01:22:34.080 | - We need to distinguish this

01:22:35.620 | because people nowadays like gonna put TRT,

01:22:39.300 | well, as long as it's keeping someone's testosterone

01:22:41.340 | in the normal reference range,

01:22:42.660 | which is somewhere between 300 and 1,200 nanograms

01:22:45.340 | per deciliter, then they're like, they're not a,

01:22:47.840 | you've never injected a synthetic version of a hormone.

01:22:51.340 | - No, and like my testosterone, even from like age 18,

01:22:55.900 | when the first time I had it measured

01:22:57.260 | up until like even a year ago,

01:22:59.060 | the lowest it's been, I think it's been like 750

01:23:01.860 | and the highest it's been was like 1050.

01:23:04.680 | And so I obviously don't need it.

01:23:07.060 | - Yeah, you don't need it.

01:23:07.900 | You're well, you're on the upper, you're high normal.

01:23:10.940 | - Right.

01:23:12.380 | So the reason that I've been able to have so much success,

01:23:15.500 | and I get the skepticism, I really do.

01:23:17.740 | So many people say, I mean, look at how many people

01:23:19.300 | are out beating their chest saying they're drug free

01:23:21.140 | and then it comes out that they weren't, right?

01:23:24.040 | But I have been brutally consistent for 25 years.

01:23:27.820 | In 25 years, the longest I ever took off

01:23:31.040 | of resistance training was seven days

01:23:33.620 | and it was after I won world championships in 2022

01:23:37.660 | for M1 93 kilo, you know, so I've been able

01:23:40.900 | to be really consistent with my training.

01:23:43.220 | And I always give this comparison of,

01:23:46.360 | I think it just really highlights

01:23:49.080 | how powerful consistency is.

01:23:51.220 | And it relates back to my favorite quote I've ever heard.

01:23:54.140 | "The magic you're looking for is in the work

01:23:56.220 | you keep attempting to avoid."

01:23:58.700 | The work is the hack.

01:24:00.380 | If people, and I liked what our friend Peter Attia said this

01:24:03.120 | when he was talking about biohacks

01:24:04.180 | and why I didn't like the term biohacks.

01:24:05.380 | He said, I don't like that it occupies

01:24:07.580 | so much mind space, right?

01:24:10.660 | You get people really focused on the minutiae,

01:24:13.260 | which is fine if they're already doing the big stuff,

01:24:15.380 | if they want to kind of level up a little bit, cool.

01:24:17.760 | For me, minutiae is where I live

01:24:19.140 | because the difference between me winning a powerlifting meet

01:24:21.660 | and me losing world championships is 1%, right?

01:24:25.700 | But for most people, we just got to get inconsistent.

01:24:28.420 | If I said, Andrew, I want you to become

01:24:32.740 | the best three-point shooter you possibly can be,

01:24:35.120 | but you can't get any coaching

01:24:37.000 | and you can't even watch any tutorials, right?

01:24:39.360 | But all you did for 10 years was go out

01:24:42.360 | and shoot three-pointers for two hours a day.

01:24:44.600 | You probably won't go to the NBA,

01:24:47.020 | but I bet you'd be pretty good at three-pointers, right?

01:24:49.880 | And I feel like if people could just get that message

01:24:52.760 | and internalize it more.

01:24:53.960 | No, it's not that you didn't have

01:24:55.280 | your carb to fat ratio perfect.

01:24:56.720 | No, it's not that you ate your carbs at the wrong time.

01:24:59.240 | No, it's not that you didn't get

01:25:00.880 | exactly this much protein.

01:25:03.120 | It's you just stopped being consistent.

01:25:05.780 | You stopped doing it.

01:25:07.420 | Yeah, you were really consistent Monday through Friday,

01:25:09.740 | and then Saturday and Sunday came and you blew out, right?

01:25:12.580 | Like if I'm consistent with my budget Monday through Friday,

01:25:16.580 | but then I blow it on the weekend, hey, guess what?

01:25:18.980 | That weekend money still counts

01:25:20.380 | and calories are the same way.

01:25:21.980 | - And you enjoy resistance training.

01:25:24.020 | - I love it, I love it.

01:25:25.100 | - Do you do cardiovascular training?

01:25:27.140 | Defined as, 'cause people get,

01:25:29.060 | I'm starting to catch flack these days

01:25:30.540 | when I say cardio, believe it or not.

01:25:33.280 | Repetitive motion movement designed

01:25:36.980 | to elevate your heart rate for 12 minutes or more.

01:25:41.320 | - So I'll usually do like a five minute warmup

01:25:43.100 | on the bike before I train.

01:25:44.780 | And then I will also make sure I get

01:25:48.700 | at least 10,000 steps on average per day.

01:25:51.140 | I usually average more closer to like 11,000,

01:25:53.980 | but I don't do a lot of purposeful cardio.

01:25:56.180 | Now, what I will tell you is my average heart rate

01:25:59.180 | in lifting sessions is about 140 to 150.

01:26:01.800 | So if the definition of cardio is that,

01:26:07.700 | then I'm getting cardio.

01:26:08.980 | And actually when I've had, you know,

01:26:11.800 | most of my markers of metabolic health assessed,

01:26:15.220 | I'm very metabolically healthy.

01:26:16.820 | I've got good, actually it was funny.

01:26:20.540 | I just competed at nationals in late May and won.

01:26:25.540 | So I won, and actually, again, very cool kind of side story.

01:26:30.540 | We talked about the injuries I've dealt with.

01:26:33.100 | And so I'm 42 now, it's been an eight year journey.

01:26:36.300 | And I mean, going from, I've had back pain so bad

01:26:40.140 | I couldn't even get up the floor.

01:26:41.180 | Needed a cortisone injection in my spine at one point,

01:26:43.180 | just to be able to stand up.

01:26:45.020 | And multiple hip injuries,

01:26:48.460 | a lot of chronic pain I dealt with.

01:26:50.140 | And I'm very proud of myself that I never gave up

01:26:53.220 | 'cause in my heart of hearts, I felt like

01:26:56.540 | I haven't hit my last PR yet.

01:26:58.340 | And at nationals this past year,

01:26:59.540 | I actually set a national deadlift record

01:27:01.220 | for my age and weight.

01:27:02.260 | - Congratulations.

01:27:03.100 | - And it was actually an unofficial world record

01:27:05.540 | and qualified for world championships.

01:27:08.420 | But one of the team USA coaches, his name's Matt Gary,

01:27:13.220 | him and his wife Susie are like,

01:27:15.260 | in evidence-based powerlifting, they are the goats.

01:27:17.460 | And there is no better game day coach

01:27:20.860 | to pick attempts than Matt and Susie Gary.

01:27:23.020 | Other than maybe my coach, Ben Escrow, shout out to Ben.

01:27:25.780 | But they were at the meet

01:27:29.700 | and we've known each other for 15 years.

01:27:31.980 | And the next day I came down into the lobby

01:27:34.300 | and they're down eating breakfast.

01:27:35.420 | And Matt's like, "Your ears must be burning.

01:27:37.700 | We were just talking about you."

01:27:38.780 | And I'm like, "Oh, what?"

01:27:39.900 | He goes, "You know what I'm impressed with?"

01:27:41.580 | He goes, "Your cardiovascular fitness."

01:27:45.020 | And you know, powerlifting meets nine lifts, right?

01:27:47.220 | You get three attempts on squat, bench press, deadlift.

01:27:49.420 | And so I kind of like looked at him weird.

01:27:50.700 | He goes, "We were there between warmups and finishing.

01:27:55.100 | It was about four hours.

01:27:57.060 | You never sat down.

01:27:58.780 | You were yelling the entire time.

01:28:00.700 | You're talking the entire time."

01:28:03.220 | 'Cause I'm a very extroverted, active person.

01:28:05.900 | Then when I'm firing myself up, it comes out very extra.

01:28:08.460 | He's like, "You're yelling the entire time

01:28:10.940 | and you never were tired."

01:28:12.740 | And again, when I look at my heart rate

01:28:15.500 | and I was at the meet,

01:28:16.340 | I think the average was like 150 or 160.

01:28:18.860 | And so some people would not consider that cardio,

01:28:23.020 | but I would say my cardiovascular system does all right.

01:28:26.740 | - I would argue it might be related

01:28:28.140 | to you're not getting sick very often.

01:28:30.780 | It's very clear that activation

01:28:32.540 | of the sympathetic nervous system

01:28:33.940 | is one main driver of the immune system.

01:28:36.220 | This is why often people observe

01:28:38.280 | that they go through a very stressful period of life

01:28:40.500 | and then they go on vacation and they get sick,

01:28:42.940 | or they're taking care of a loved one

01:28:45.360 | and that person either gets better or passes away,

01:28:47.700 | there's some ending to that caretaking,

01:28:49.940 | and then they get sick.

01:28:52.340 | - I have observed that exact thing.

01:28:53.660 | When I went through my first divorce,

01:28:56.020 | I was also involved in a lawsuit

01:28:58.660 | with a company that I used to own a portion of.

01:29:00.940 | It's a very long story,

01:29:02.420 | ended up having a good ending for me.

01:29:04.900 | And all that stuff kind of resolved itself,

01:29:06.980 | the divorce, the lawsuit, everything resolved itself

01:29:09.020 | in about a six-week time period.

01:29:10.980 | As soon as it resolved,

01:29:12.260 | I got sicker than I ever had been in my entire life.

01:29:15.320 | I got the actual influenza.

01:29:18.180 | I tell people after that experience in 2018,

01:29:20.500 | I go, here's words I'll never use again.

01:29:22.780 | I think I might have the flu.

01:29:24.440 | No, you know, after you've had it for sure, you know.

01:29:28.080 | But it was like my body had just,

01:29:32.740 | maybe it's a little bit of woo,

01:29:35.100 | but it was like my body,

01:29:37.300 | I dragged it across the finish line and then said,

01:29:39.460 | okay, we'll see you in a couple of weeks

01:29:40.820 | 'cause we're taking a break.

01:29:41.940 | - When you think about human evolution,

01:29:43.220 | I mean, these are just so stories.

01:29:44.580 | Anytime people talk about human evolution, by the way,

01:29:46.460 | like no one really knows,

01:29:47.460 | but the idea that, you know, if there was a famine

01:29:49.960 | or you need to take care of children in famine,

01:29:51.980 | the idea that you would be more vulnerable to disease

01:29:54.420 | at those moments, sure.

01:29:56.220 | But it's also true that the catecholamines,

01:30:00.940 | dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine,

01:30:03.080 | activate certain components of the immune system

01:30:05.460 | that protect you against things.

01:30:06.620 | I mean, it's not gonna protect you against everything,

01:30:08.340 | but it's when you relax and rest finally

01:30:10.580 | that you are more vulnerable to incoming infections.

01:30:12.900 | - And we see this with pain too, right?

01:30:14.220 | Like you had Sean Mackey on talking about this stuff

01:30:16.700 | where, you know, I forget who was talking about this.

01:30:20.460 | I remember listening to a podcast with,

01:30:21.740 | it wasn't him, but it was another pain expert.

01:30:23.300 | And they said, you know, because your beliefs about pain,

01:30:27.420 | your stress level, your sleep,

01:30:29.100 | like your psychological milieu actually matter

01:30:32.060 | in terms of your pain experience.

01:30:33.620 | In fact, the single biggest lever I've pulled

01:30:37.060 | to get me consistently training and pain-free

01:30:40.600 | was becoming more relaxed and less stressed out

01:30:42.500 | all the time and managing my psychological stress better.

01:30:45.020 | You know, when you're not vibrating

01:30:46.520 | and spun up all the time, your body has,

01:30:49.460 | again, this is a little woo-woo-y,

01:30:52.060 | but I think you have more energy.

01:30:53.620 | I mean, if you look at- - It makes sense.

01:30:55.380 | It makes sense.

01:30:56.220 | I mean, those catecholamines,

01:30:57.260 | I mean, there are other molecules involved too,

01:30:58.820 | but that, you know, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine,

01:31:03.720 | you know, cocktail is driving us forward in motion

01:31:08.020 | and thinking, you know, all the time.

01:31:10.860 | And if you're putting thoughts into one set of things,

01:31:15.260 | they're not going elsewhere.

01:31:16.340 | Like you said, it's all trade-offs.

01:31:17.540 | - I read something from a PhD in psychology

01:31:19.540 | who said, "Stop thinking about your problems.

01:31:21.500 | "The problem is you're thinking

01:31:22.340 | "about your problems too much.

01:31:23.860 | "Thinking about it doesn't solve them.

01:31:25.680 | "And just ruminating on them makes it worse."

01:31:27.380 | And actually, again, if you look at like pain literature,

01:31:30.300 | fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome,

01:31:33.380 | very close ties to psychological stress.

01:31:35.820 | And we were talking earlier about like,

01:31:37.520 | if you look at the data on mortality,

01:31:40.620 | cardiovascular disease, cancer with ACEs scores,

01:31:44.260 | which is Adverse Childhood Events Scale.

01:31:46.700 | So zero being best, you were loved as a child,

01:31:50.660 | that sort of thing, you had no real big worries,

01:31:53.180 | 10 being basically abused.

01:31:55.000 | There's like a very, I don't wanna say very tight,

01:32:00.700 | but there's a dose response of ACEs scores

01:32:04.260 | on the risk of mortality.

01:32:06.360 | So what happens in the body affects the mind,

01:32:09.500 | and what happens in the mind affects the body.

01:32:11.060 | And we were talking about with pain literature,

01:32:12.700 | what happens in the mind affects the body

01:32:15.340 | in your pain experience.

01:32:17.700 | And even just something like sleep.

01:32:20.580 | There was a study done where they looked

01:32:21.820 | at military members, and they had eight hours of sleep

01:32:25.460 | versus four hours of sleep,

01:32:26.440 | and they looked at the risk of acute injury.

01:32:29.220 | 236% increased risk in the people getting four hours

01:32:34.220 | of sleep versus eight hours.

01:32:35.700 | And now here's where people get this wrong.

01:32:37.940 | Somebody reached out to me and said,

01:32:38.780 | "Well, I got four hours of sleep last night, should I?"

01:32:40.860 | No, no, no, one bad night of sleep doesn't do that.

01:32:44.220 | Sleep is a cumulative effect.

01:32:45.740 | Just like if you have a week's long worth of bad sleep,

01:32:49.180 | but then you sleep 12 hours on the weekend,

01:32:50.580 | you're not making up that sleep debt.

01:32:52.060 | It's more about what you're doing time over time.

01:32:55.100 | - Just like nutrition, just like training.

01:32:57.020 | - Exactly.

01:32:57.860 | And so this actually brings me to,

01:33:00.740 | I know we kind of have gone down the rabbit hole here,

01:33:02.620 | but when you look at,

01:33:05.160 | Ben Carpenter did a great example of this.

01:33:07.660 | He has a good social media account.

01:33:09.700 | He had a jar of blue marbles and a jar of green marbles.

01:33:14.020 | He said, "Let's pretend that this is all junk food.

01:33:16.420 | "These green marbles are all junk food, ultra processed.

01:33:20.920 | "This blue is minimally processed whole foods, right?

01:33:25.920 | "If my diet is mostly junk, and I add one good meal,"

01:33:31.140 | and he puts a blue marble in the green,

01:33:33.120 | "did it change things?"

01:33:35.020 | No.

01:33:35.980 | And everybody knows that, right?

01:33:36.940 | Like if you eat a mostly junk diet,

01:33:38.380 | you have one good, one salad or one good meal,

01:33:42.260 | it's not gonna change things.

01:33:43.840 | So why does everybody think if we take one from here

01:33:47.100 | and put it over here, that it drastically changes things?

01:33:49.980 | Because it doesn't.

01:33:50.820 | It's about what you do consistently over the course of time.

01:33:53.920 | And so speaking of,

01:33:58.440 | we're talking about the mind affecting the body,

01:33:59.940 | but then the body also affects the mind.

01:34:02.700 | And so there was just a study published,

01:34:04.600 | I just covered it on my channel,

01:34:06.780 | where they took men with general anxiety disorder

01:34:09.500 | and major depressive disorder,

01:34:11.540 | and they had them resistance train two times a week

01:34:14.420 | for 25 minutes a session, 50 minutes total, eight weeks.

01:34:17.940 | - It's not much training.

01:34:19.460 | - I think it was like six hours and 40 minutes

01:34:21.100 | of total training over the entire two months.

01:34:23.900 | Now, in statistics, you're familiar with an effect size,

01:34:27.180 | which is basically how meaningful is an effect,

01:34:28.860 | because you can have a significant effect

01:34:31.100 | that isn't very meaningful

01:34:32.200 | if you have enough subject number.

01:34:34.000 | So when we say things like an effect size,

01:34:38.700 | 0.2 is considered small, 0.5 is considered moderate,

01:34:41.940 | and 0.8 is considered large, anything above 0.8.

01:34:44.460 | SSRIs are typically in the 0.3 to 0.5 range.

01:34:50.540 | I think in like best case scenarios,

01:34:53.540 | they get up around a 0.8, 0.7, 0.8.

01:34:56.500 | The effect size for resistance training two times a week,

01:35:00.560 | 25 minutes a day for eight weeks was a 1.7

01:35:04.380 | on major depressive disorder.

01:35:05.700 | - Wow.

01:35:06.820 | - Anybody who's a scientist out there,

01:35:08.260 | if they hear effect size of 1.7,

01:35:10.300 | they do exactly what you did.

01:35:11.800 | Their eyebrows go up and they go,

01:35:13.220 | "Are they sure that's right?"

01:35:14.980 | You don't see effect sizes like that very often.

01:35:17.780 | And I want to be very clear,

01:35:18.940 | I'm not saying do resistance training in place of SSRIs.

01:35:22.720 | That's a very-- - Of course not.

01:35:23.560 | But these individuals had not trained previously.

01:35:27.260 | - They hadn't trained before, yeah.

01:35:28.500 | They were healthy or actually don't know

01:35:31.640 | the specific characteristics,

01:35:32.580 | but I knew they were coming from like not training, right?

01:35:35.240 | Now, hey, like, listen, both these things could be true.

01:35:37.800 | Maybe somebody needs to get an SSRI

01:35:39.520 | because like depressed people

01:35:41.040 | don't even want to get out of bed a lot of times, right?

01:35:43.280 | So getting them to the gym,

01:35:44.360 | even if they know it's going to help them is a hard,

01:35:47.040 | it's a hard swing.

01:35:48.600 | So maybe coupling that.

01:35:50.180 | But that's just resistance training

01:35:53.900 | and that affects this, right?

01:35:57.100 | So I think one of the biggest revolutions

01:36:01.520 | we're going to see in science

01:36:02.900 | is the broad application of biopsychosocial

01:36:06.820 | across a bunch of different disciplines

01:36:09.280 | and stop thinking about,

01:36:11.260 | well, your body's a bag of meat

01:36:13.620 | and it's attached to your brain.

01:36:15.580 | And if you poke the bag, punch the bag,

01:36:17.060 | burn the bag, cut the bag, brain goes owie.

01:36:19.220 | And I think we're going to start

01:36:21.700 | thinking about things much differently.

01:36:23.740 | And I think it's going to open up a lot more in science.

01:36:26.180 | And in fact, honestly,

01:36:27.820 | if I had to go back and do a PhD again,

01:36:30.000 | it would be in some sort of like psychology or whatnot,

01:36:33.540 | because I just think there's so much untapped in that realm.

01:36:38.540 | And I was actually talking about this

01:36:41.060 | with somebody the other day and it's pure anecdote.

01:36:45.020 | I'm completely speculating.

01:36:47.860 | I have yet to see an interview

01:36:49.740 | with somebody who's in their nineties or hundreds

01:36:51.700 | who sounds really stressed out.

01:36:53.320 | They're mostly like DGAF, right?

01:36:58.300 | And when you ask them what they did like,

01:37:00.180 | most of them say, "Oh, I drink wine every night."

01:37:02.300 | Or the one I remember, she was like 110.

01:37:04.700 | She's like, "Yeah, I drink a Dr. Pepper every day,"

01:37:06.400 | or whatever.

01:37:07.240 | It strikes me that, and again, genetics matter,

01:37:11.540 | their lifestyle matters.

01:37:12.380 | I'm not saying any of that stuff doesn't matter.

01:37:16.100 | I don't see, at least in my experience,

01:37:18.900 | people who make it old age,

01:37:21.560 | they're not usually very spun up all the time.

01:37:26.340 | I just, I haven't observed that.

01:37:27.900 | I don't know if you've seen similar observations or-

01:37:30.260 | - They seem to enjoy life.

01:37:31.180 | I have a grandfather on one side that died earlier,

01:37:36.020 | but a grandfather on the other side

01:37:37.360 | who lived into his nineties and he ate a steak every day.

01:37:41.820 | He smoked till pretty late in life

01:37:43.100 | before he eventually quit.

01:37:45.020 | He had ice cream dessert after every dinner.

01:37:49.540 | He's Argentine, so they stack their meals

01:37:51.460 | toward the end of the day, definitely.

01:37:53.220 | He liked walking.

01:37:54.900 | I guess the point is that he was always interested

01:37:57.340 | in what was in the newspapers,

01:37:58.620 | but he wouldn't get riled up about it.

01:38:00.500 | He liked walking.

01:38:01.340 | He really enjoyed life.

01:38:02.500 | If there's one key characteristic to describe him

01:38:05.820 | is he really enjoyed life.

01:38:07.900 | Now, he didn't take the best care of himself

01:38:09.860 | in the sense that had he perhaps never smoked

01:38:12.420 | or quit earlier or dropped the excess calories,

01:38:15.780 | he might've lived an additional two or three years,

01:38:17.520 | but he was really happy until the end.

01:38:20.780 | - And that's the lesson there is we're not saying

01:38:22.740 | that that stuff doesn't matter.

01:38:24.060 | He would have gotten better results if he hadn't smoked,

01:38:26.300 | if he had paid more attention to his nutrition,

01:38:28.420 | that sort of thing.

01:38:29.380 | But we have to keep in mind,

01:38:32.420 | like what is the hierarchy of importance

01:38:35.140 | and the power here, right?

01:38:37.220 | And so I'll give you an example.

01:38:41.340 | We're going to zoom in on the blade of grass,

01:38:42.820 | but I believe it relates back

01:38:43.900 | to this conversation we're having.

01:38:46.180 | So we know creatine works

01:38:47.740 | 'cause we've got thousands

01:38:49.460 | of double-blind placebo-controlled trials

01:38:51.260 | showing that creatine works, right?

01:38:53.060 | But there was a study where they gave people creatine

01:38:56.940 | or didn't give them creatine

01:38:58.020 | and then randomly told them if they got it or not.

01:39:00.340 | Meaning you had people who didn't get creatine got creatine,

01:39:03.900 | who didn't get it, told they didn't get it,

01:39:06.780 | people who got it, told they got it,

01:39:09.700 | people who got it, told they didn't get it.

01:39:12.540 | And what they found was the results,

01:39:14.380 | and I forget what they actually specifically measured,

01:39:16.260 | but the results basically were like,

01:39:18.100 | not what they got, what they told them, okay?

01:39:21.140 | Now, people will misinterpret that as,

01:39:23.380 | well, see, creatine doesn't work.

01:39:24.700 | No, no, no, it works.

01:39:26.620 | It just means your beliefs about what creatine does

01:39:29.700 | are more powerful than what it actually does.

01:39:32.020 | Just like actually there's a similar trial with caffeine.

01:39:34.860 | And I'm thinking about there was a study,

01:39:39.860 | Brad, I don't have the specific citation,

01:39:42.620 | but they had two groups of men train drug-free.

01:39:47.620 | One group, they told they were getting steroids.

01:39:51.160 | That group gained significantly more strength

01:39:53.380 | and muscle mass.

01:39:54.220 | Now, I would argue that's probably

01:39:58.060 | 'cause they're going into training sessions

01:39:59.460 | believing that they can train harder,

01:40:01.540 | believing that they will recover better.

01:40:03.980 | But that goes to show the power of placebo

01:40:06.540 | and the power of belief.

01:40:07.780 | When I say placebo, people think what I'm saying

01:40:11.220 | is you're lying about your experience.

01:40:13.420 | That is not what I'm saying at all.

01:40:15.140 | I think your experience is probably quite valid.

01:40:18.820 | What I'm saying is it may not be due to the thing

01:40:22.980 | you think it's due to, but your beliefs about the thing.

01:40:27.980 | And so where I get really focused is

01:40:33.740 | let's do the big stuff right,

01:40:35.260 | because so many people are so worried about little stuff.

01:40:38.580 | And one of the things I'll tell them is,

01:40:41.380 | hey, I have no data to back this up,

01:40:43.780 | but my intuition tells me that the amount of stress

01:40:46.260 | you're spending on these small variables

01:40:48.020 | is probably killing you faster

01:40:49.780 | than if you got those variables wrong.

01:40:52.420 | And if we could just focus on the big rocks first,

01:40:56.700 | and if we can pick up some pebbles

01:40:58.580 | after we get the big rocks, great,

01:41:00.180 | but don't drop the big rocks trying to pick up pebbles.

01:41:03.140 | - I love it, and I love this example

01:41:05.820 | of the creatine experiment,

01:41:07.780 | because just to repeat the conclusion,

01:41:10.980 | because I want to make sure that people

01:41:12.580 | don't take away the wrong conclusion, creatine works.

01:41:17.220 | - Absolutely.

01:41:18.860 | - But your belief about creatine works more in this case.

01:41:23.860 | So two things can work, one more than the other,

01:41:27.780 | and the placebo, aka belief effects,

01:41:30.380 | are very, very powerful.

01:41:32.500 | - Exactly.

01:41:33.340 | - I completely agree with you there.

01:41:35.060 | Wonderful way to set the stage

01:41:36.900 | for some of the specific questions that were asked

01:41:39.980 | when I said on social media,

01:41:42.660 | I'm going to sit down with Lane Norton again.

01:41:45.260 | And I'm very curious about some of these as well.

01:41:46.740 | So I'll inject some of my own experience and questions.

01:41:50.540 | Training to failure and reps in reserve.

01:41:53.780 | We should define these a little bit.

01:41:56.540 | And before we get into it,

01:41:57.820 | it's fun to have these kinds of conversations nowadays

01:42:00.940 | about resistance training,

01:42:02.300 | knowing that both men and women should resistance train.

01:42:05.420 | People who want bigger muscles and who don't

01:42:07.420 | should resistance train.

01:42:08.360 | Because in the past, it was always about like bodybuilding

01:42:10.900 | and pre-season football and people going to the military.

01:42:13.740 | I think thanks to the great work that you've done,

01:42:16.380 | but I'll just give a particular shout out

01:42:18.820 | to some of the women in the nutrition and fitness space,

01:42:22.120 | namely Dr. Gabrielle Lyon in terms of menopause,

01:42:26.600 | perimenopause, Dr. Mary Claire Haver,

01:42:29.060 | and women in that sector really emphasizing

01:42:31.980 | the key need for resistance training.

01:42:33.580 | There are other names as well,

01:42:34.900 | but really championing the importance

01:42:37.180 | of resistance training.

01:42:38.500 | Training to failure in my book means

01:42:40.300 | when you can't move the weight by whatever means

01:42:44.180 | anymore in good form, in proper form, that's failure.

01:42:50.140 | So we're not talking about four straps.

01:42:51.740 | We're not talking about swaying the upper body

01:42:53.900 | or using momentum.

01:42:55.700 | So training to failure,

01:42:56.580 | you can't move the resistance anymore in good form.

01:43:00.140 | And reps in reserve, my understanding is

01:43:02.260 | one's own subjective understanding about how close they are

01:43:05.320 | to that point of failure.

01:43:07.460 | Do I have that right?

01:43:08.300 | - Yeah, so you define failure the way I define failure,

01:43:11.940 | which is you cannot take the weight

01:43:13.420 | through another concentric repetition without breaking form.

01:43:16.340 | Reps in reserve would be an RIR of one

01:43:21.340 | means you stopped one rep shy of failure.

01:43:23.700 | RIR of two, you stopped two reps shy of failure

01:43:26.260 | and so on and so forth, right?

01:43:27.900 | And so I would define those that way.

01:43:31.020 | - Okay, so with those definitions in mind,

01:43:34.220 | is training to failure more effective

01:43:37.020 | at generating strength and hypertrophy increases

01:43:41.060 | than if one keeps a few reps in reserve?

01:43:44.060 | And of course we have to balance this

01:43:45.380 | against all the factors related to recovery, et cetera.

01:43:48.420 | But assuming that one follows a program of doing,

01:43:51.840 | and I'm really just trying to cut us

01:43:53.880 | right through the middle here.

01:43:55.100 | Let's say two or three exercises per muscle group

01:43:59.220 | and does after a sufficient warmup,

01:44:02.100 | let's say two to five sets that we're going to call work sets.

01:44:08.360 | You could imagine an extreme scenario

01:44:12.620 | where every single work set is taken to failure.

01:44:15.580 | You could imagine taking only the last set

01:44:19.460 | of each exercise to failure.

01:44:20.720 | You can imagine taking none of them to failure.

01:44:23.020 | Assuming adequate volume is achieved across the week.

01:44:27.380 | My understanding is this is 10 to 20 sets

01:44:29.700 | per muscle group across the week.

01:44:31.780 | It could be distributed across different workouts

01:44:34.900 | or all done in one workout.

01:44:36.560 | Is training to failure going to generate

01:44:40.020 | more strength and hypertrophy

01:44:42.120 | than leaving some repetitions in reserve?

01:44:44.020 | So let's start with the extreme scenario.

01:44:45.820 | I go to failure on every single set

01:44:48.240 | and I do what I need to to recover.

01:44:50.840 | It doesn't matter if it's only doing that muscle group

01:44:54.360 | once per week or spread out multiple times per week.

01:44:57.200 | I'm doing what I need to to recover in between.

01:44:59.440 | My genetics, my hormone status, my sleep,

01:45:02.340 | my nutrition, on and on.

01:45:03.760 | Is going to failure more effective

01:45:07.340 | than not going to failure?

01:45:09.340 | - This is going to generate a lot of discussion

01:45:10.720 | in the comments.

01:45:11.560 | I can't wait to see it.

01:45:12.400 | So I'm going to cite quite a bit of work

01:45:16.460 | from my powerlifting coach, Zach Robinson,

01:45:18.380 | because he is at FAU, just finished his PhD

01:45:21.240 | and did a lot of meta-aggressions and meta-analyses

01:45:23.960 | on this exact topic.

01:45:26.480 | So I'll give you the answers first

01:45:28.580 | that are straight down the line scientific answers

01:45:30.120 | and then I'll explain things.

01:45:31.800 | For muscular hypertrophy,

01:45:33.720 | you need to get close to failure.

01:45:37.520 | But you probably don't need to train to failure

01:45:39.720 | to maximize hypertrophy, but you got to get pretty close.

01:45:42.620 | You can be stronger, but to maximize strength,

01:45:47.640 | you're probably better off not touching failure very often.

01:45:51.420 | So there are a few studies now looking at this,

01:45:53.920 | showing that, I think there was one study recently,

01:45:57.060 | and I can't remember the exact details,

01:45:58.480 | but I remember it being pretty well designed.

01:46:01.380 | And the takeaway was, hypertrophy was similar

01:46:04.080 | between the groups, but the group that went to failure,

01:46:07.040 | or stayed a few reps shy of failure,

01:46:08.560 | actually got stronger compared to the group

01:46:11.540 | that was taking most sets to failure.

01:46:14.000 | - And did they control for total volume of work?

01:46:15.840 | - Yes, so- - Okay, 'cause I can imagine

01:46:17.280 | not going to failure, you can do more sets

01:46:18.960 | because you've got- - And that's exactly-

01:46:21.080 | - More quote unquote gas in the tank, right?

01:46:22.640 | - And practically that may be a benefit

01:46:24.540 | of stopping shy of failure, right?

01:46:26.160 | But yeah, they control for those variables.

01:46:28.360 | So when we talk about volume,

01:46:30.800 | the way we define that is essentially number of hard sets,

01:46:33.680 | which a hard set would be a set close to failure.

01:46:37.280 | The general consensus is within five reps

01:46:39.680 | of failure is considered a hard set.

01:46:41.360 | Now, what I will tell people is,

01:46:45.320 | that may not sound like much,

01:46:46.760 | most people have never truly pushed themselves to failure.

01:46:49.880 | Okay, and I'll give some practical examples of me.

01:46:52.780 | So my best set of squats ever, I did 530 for 10.

01:46:56.240 | This was a long time ago.

01:46:58.160 | - Yikes.

01:46:59.000 | - I, when I finished that set, I actually,

01:47:02.820 | somebody had to come save me

01:47:03.920 | because I couldn't fully lock out my lumbar

01:47:06.240 | and I couldn't get the bar on my right side

01:47:08.760 | all the way back up.

01:47:09.580 | So they had to run over in the gym and help me.

01:47:11.480 | After that set, I laid down and I physically

01:47:15.860 | hardly couldn't move for about 15 minutes.

01:47:18.120 | - So this is, you know, gun to the head type failure.

01:47:20.080 | - Yes, you do as many as you can.

01:47:21.720 | Your family's been kidnapped.

01:47:22.960 | If you don't get these 10 reps, you're, you know.

01:47:24.560 | - All those mental games.

01:47:25.520 | - That sort of thing.

01:47:26.560 | And I mean, I was done.

01:47:30.840 | You know what I mean?

01:47:32.120 | And so one of the things I'll tell people is,

01:47:34.320 | the first five reps of that set were still hard.

01:47:38.480 | They still felt hard, right?

01:47:40.660 | And so people will say,

01:47:42.140 | "Oh, you stop a rep or two shy of failure.

01:47:43.880 | "You're trained like a,"

01:47:45.340 | I'm like, "So you're telling me

01:47:47.060 | "if I stopped two reps shy on that one,

01:47:49.660 | "that that's an easy set?"

01:47:50.860 | 'Cause it's not, I can tell you that.

01:47:52.540 | And the reason I'm giving this background

01:47:55.700 | is because in research studies

01:47:58.340 | where they have people who are like

01:48:00.140 | beginners or intermediates

01:48:02.680 | and they ask them to rate their RIR,

01:48:05.900 | they tend to underestimate their RIR, right?

01:48:09.040 | So they'll say, you know,

01:48:11.360 | during a set, say your RIR,

01:48:14.440 | and they might say two.

01:48:16.000 | And what they find is when the researchers

01:48:17.880 | push them to true failure,

01:48:19.080 | yell at them, crank the music,

01:48:20.760 | get them really psyched up,

01:48:22.220 | they get five more reps

01:48:24.360 | than they think they'll get on average, right?

01:48:26.360 | So most people,

01:48:27.840 | if you've never actually taken things to true failure,

01:48:30.600 | you actually probably don't know what it is.

01:48:32.240 | So I do think it's useful to train to failure at times.

01:48:34.960 | - I think you make a very important point,

01:48:36.580 | which is that occasionally training to failure

01:48:40.140 | gives you a sense of what failure really is for you.

01:48:43.260 | And no one can really tell you that,

01:48:45.440 | only you can tell you that and experience that.

01:48:49.300 | But if I understand correctly earlier, you said,

01:48:51.740 | once you know what failure is for you,

01:48:54.440 | then if strength gains are your goal,

01:48:57.300 | and I think more and more people, by the way,

01:48:59.100 | are training for strength who don't want hypertrophy,

01:49:01.500 | at least not across every muscle group.

01:49:03.820 | I think when I talk to the general public,

01:49:06.260 | which I do a lot,

01:49:07.120 | I get the sense that men and women are like,

01:49:09.340 | yeah, I'll lift weights.

01:49:10.940 | I can see the value of that.

01:49:13.100 | Would love a little bit more muscle here,

01:49:14.620 | a little bit more muscle there,

01:49:15.660 | but they don't wanna be generally larger.

01:49:18.300 | And yet they can understand and appreciate the value

01:49:21.980 | of getting stronger everywhere.

01:49:25.060 | 'Cause being strong across your whole body

01:49:26.700 | is one of the core definitions of health.

01:49:29.160 | - Being strong is fun.

01:49:31.300 | So again, for hypertrophy,

01:49:33.740 | doesn't seem to matter if you take every set to failure

01:49:35.700 | or stop a couple reps shy.

01:49:37.020 | I would argue that probably you'd want to leave

01:49:42.020 | most reps, most sets shy of failure.

01:49:45.980 | And if you're gonna take one to failure,

01:49:47.360 | take the last set of an exercise to failure.

01:49:49.780 | 'Cause then you can get whatever benefits might be there.

01:49:52.780 | But if you take the first set to failure,

01:49:54.340 | I mean, imagine if I did that set of 10

01:49:56.300 | with 530 on squats as my first set to...

01:49:59.740 | What am I gonna get the next set if I try to do 530?

01:50:02.360 | I can tell you based on how I felt,

01:50:03.860 | maybe three reps, maybe, you know?

01:50:06.280 | And so your performance is just gonna

01:50:08.620 | really drop off a cliff if you're going to true failure

01:50:10.900 | on like a compound exercise.

01:50:12.540 | Isolation is a little bit different.

01:50:14.340 | And so I would say, whereas if you probably could have done

01:50:19.540 | like sets with six, seven reps for multiple sets

01:50:23.620 | and then have gone to failure on your last one, right?

01:50:27.700 | Now, it may seem a little bit counterintuitive.

01:50:31.380 | Why would it be the same for hypertrophy

01:50:33.780 | but different for strength?

01:50:35.300 | Well, with strength, you also have to think about

01:50:37.100 | stimulus to fatigue ratio

01:50:39.460 | because fatigue will mass strength, right?

01:50:41.900 | And I know this because I've...

01:50:43.620 | Like when I overreach for powerlifting competitions,

01:50:45.700 | which is basically like we're taking me

01:50:47.340 | a little bit past my point of what I can recover from.

01:50:50.660 | I mean, I've had literally before nationals in 2017,

01:50:55.140 | I was warming up on deadlift

01:50:57.260 | in my last heavy deadlift session,

01:50:59.460 | like 10 days before the meet.

01:51:01.260 | And I went to pull my final warmup, which is 585,

01:51:03.580 | and I couldn't budget off the ground.

01:51:05.340 | I was so tired, sore, I couldn't get...

01:51:09.980 | It was like, I couldn't get my body

01:51:11.840 | to do what I wanted it to do.

01:51:13.640 | 10 days later, I pulled 716, right?

01:51:18.900 | It's amazing what fatigue will mask.

01:51:22.540 | And so if you're always training to failure,

01:51:26.460 | you're gonna be training

01:51:27.300 | under pretty high fatigue circumstances.

01:51:30.420 | Doesn't really matter for muscle growth

01:51:31.580 | 'cause it's really just about doing enough hard sets

01:51:33.300 | and putting that mechanical tension on the muscle.

01:51:35.820 | With strength, you also have to think about like,

01:51:40.240 | what is the most pure form of strength?

01:51:43.360 | It's force production, right?

01:51:45.580 | And force is mass times acceleration.

01:51:47.800 | So you have a mass component,

01:51:49.420 | you have a speed component.

01:51:52.580 | And so this is actually Zach Robinson

01:51:55.140 | and his company, Data-Driven Strength,

01:51:57.180 | who I've been coaching with for three years.

01:51:59.300 | I heard them on a podcast,

01:52:01.120 | and he was giving his hypothesis

01:52:05.540 | of how to optimize strength in a powerlifter.

01:52:08.940 | And I remember thinking,

01:52:10.100 | I really like the way this guy is thinking.

01:52:11.900 | He's thinking outside the box and it makes a lot of sense.

01:52:14.100 | So one of his things was,

01:52:15.940 | if you're training close to fatigue all the time,

01:52:19.300 | and the goal is strength,

01:52:21.040 | think about what that means

01:52:22.420 | in terms of your force production.

01:52:23.980 | So let's say you do a set of eight reps, right?

01:52:28.940 | Your first few are pretty fast.

01:52:30.620 | And then by the end, they're pretty slow.

01:52:32.260 | The load hasn't changed.

01:52:33.380 | So what happens to your force production?

01:52:35.180 | Your force production is going pretty far down.

01:52:39.020 | He said, I don't really want my athletes

01:52:41.100 | grinding reps in training.

01:52:43.300 | I want them to hit some heavy singles

01:52:45.940 | and doubles and triples because they need that

01:52:47.500 | because that's a skill.

01:52:48.640 | You have to have those neurological,

01:52:50.740 | everybody's done this where they go,

01:52:51.740 | well, I hit this for 10 reps

01:52:52.740 | and here's what my one rep max should be.

01:52:54.220 | And then they go in and get stapled with it, right?

01:52:56.380 | Because it doesn't necessarily translate

01:52:58.020 | because a one rep max or the purest form of strength

01:53:00.980 | is a very specific skill.

01:53:02.500 | If you've never trained it,

01:53:03.620 | it's very difficult to get accustomed to.

01:53:06.980 | So we wanna hit some,

01:53:10.780 | his idea was in workouts,

01:53:12.540 | we're gonna hit a heavy top set,

01:53:13.940 | heavy single, double or triple or whatever it is.

01:53:17.100 | And then our back offsets,

01:53:18.820 | instead of taking those close to failure,

01:53:21.220 | instead of doing say, well, we'll do,

01:53:23.780 | 75% of your training max for sets of eight

01:53:28.780 | and have you getting pretty close to failure.

01:53:31.540 | Instead of doing three sets of eight,

01:53:32.540 | why don't we just do like six sets of four with that weight?

01:53:37.220 | Because now you're doing those first four reps,

01:53:40.500 | which you can move that weight faster.

01:53:42.780 | You're having greater force production

01:53:45.280 | and creating the same good stimulus,

01:53:48.140 | but with less fatigue.

01:53:49.500 | And so again, that was kind of the hypothesis

01:53:52.820 | and he did a meta-analysis, meta-regression

01:53:56.380 | that supported this.

01:53:57.220 | And now some of the randomized control trials

01:53:58.860 | have come out and shown something similar.

01:54:01.580 | And in my experience,

01:54:03.380 | I was honestly shocked at,

01:54:07.260 | because he had all kinds of stuff to deal with

01:54:09.060 | when he first started training me.

01:54:10.060 | 'Cause I still was dealing with a lot of back pain,

01:54:11.820 | a lot of hip pain.

01:54:13.220 | I hadn't really gotten that under control yet.

01:54:15.940 | And when I got ready for Worlds in 2022,

01:54:18.260 | which I think we did our first podcast

01:54:20.480 | like the week after I had won Worlds,

01:54:22.660 | I worked up to being able to do like two or three hard sets

01:54:27.380 | of squats a week and deadlifts.

01:54:29.060 | And that was all I could do.

01:54:29.900 | That was all my body could tolerate before I get pain.

01:54:32.500 | And so we did a lot of low load,

01:54:37.300 | relatively low, low for me,

01:54:39.220 | 60 to 70% 1RM for low rep number sets,

01:54:45.580 | but trying to move it as fast as possible

01:54:48.160 | to keep that pain under control for me,

01:54:50.380 | but to get the stimulus.

01:54:51.420 | And I was shocked at how strong I got

01:54:53.820 | because before in 2014, 15,

01:54:56.020 | when I was winning open national titles,

01:54:58.620 | I mean, I was doing 15, 20 hard sets of squats

01:55:02.340 | and deadlifts a week and way more for bench press.

01:55:06.260 | And so I always thought,

01:55:07.180 | well, that's how much I need

01:55:08.300 | to get to that level of strength.

01:55:09.820 | And even now, like,

01:55:10.780 | so we've been able to keep progressing it.

01:55:13.820 | Now I'm doing probably more like six,

01:55:15.960 | seven harder sets of those exercises per week.

01:55:18.820 | And I'm basically back to the strongest I've ever been.

01:55:21.700 | We're doing way less sets.

01:55:22.980 | And I think a lot of it is,

01:55:24.540 | we have learned to find the sweet spot

01:55:26.180 | with managing that stimulus to fatigue ratio.

01:55:27.960 | So all that to say,

01:55:29.360 | if your goal is building strength,

01:55:33.220 | it's mostly about, you know,

01:55:34.380 | doing enough like heavy lifting

01:55:37.460 | that you actually do get stronger.

01:55:39.520 | And then if you wanna train closer to failure,

01:55:43.440 | you can, because again,

01:55:45.180 | most of my audience isn't trying to be a power lifter, right?

01:55:47.940 | - No, but I think a lot of the audience

01:55:50.040 | would like to be stronger

01:55:51.220 | and not necessarily grow their muscles bigger,

01:55:53.660 | except in a few specific places on the body.

01:55:56.140 | - And so this would be the protocol.

01:55:58.780 | There we go, protocols, little plug.

01:56:01.260 | This would be a protocol for probably,

01:56:03.780 | not necessarily like growing the most muscle mass,

01:56:06.340 | but getting stronger

01:56:07.740 | because you're not training so close to failure.

01:56:10.740 | But, you know, obviously you're trying to move,

01:56:12.400 | as Zach says, whatever that given load is,

01:56:15.460 | you wanna move it as quickly as possible.

01:56:18.080 | And so, and there's actually also data to show

01:56:21.220 | that like if you train slower purposefully,

01:56:23.800 | that it's not as good for strength.

01:56:26.560 | So they actually, there was a,

01:56:27.560 | I think a meta-analysis recently

01:56:28.820 | where they looked at either concentric repetition

01:56:32.300 | of more than two seconds or less than two seconds

01:56:35.820 | and saw strength outcomes were better

01:56:37.780 | in people taking less than two seconds to complete a rep.

01:56:40.220 | - Interesting, so that's the concentric phase,

01:56:43.160 | the lowering phase, the eccentric phase.

01:56:45.000 | - No, we're not sure about that yet.

01:56:46.280 | - Interesting.

01:56:47.120 | - So, I mean, we do use some tempo training in my training,

01:56:50.440 | but it's mostly because like me doing a slower tempo squat,

01:56:53.920 | if my back starts acting up,

01:56:55.760 | I can do some squatting

01:57:00.320 | and not really hit that pain trigger as much.

01:57:03.360 | So, but I'm still trying to move the concentric

01:57:05.760 | as quickly as possible.

01:57:07.120 | And so I don't know about that.

01:57:08.840 | It doesn't matter how slowly you move the concentric

01:57:10.660 | versus how fast you move it.

01:57:12.120 | But yeah, what I would say is,

01:57:14.780 | when it comes to building muscle,

01:57:16.620 | really the world is your oyster.

01:57:18.340 | The research really shows machines versus free weights.

01:57:23.340 | - Low reps, high reps.

01:57:26.100 | - Low reps, high reps, going to failure,

01:57:27.780 | stopping a few reps shy.

01:57:29.000 | It all builds the same amount of muscle for the most part.

01:57:32.220 | - But you have to work hard.

01:57:33.420 | - But you gotta work hard.

01:57:34.540 | Yeah, you gotta be consistent with it.

01:57:36.060 | Obviously like the theme of this podcast, right?

01:57:39.600 | But you can do it anyway.

01:57:42.040 | And if we look at the, I mean, obviously anecdotal,

01:57:44.820 | but if we look at the history of the Mr. Olympia

01:57:46.280 | is they all train very differently.

01:57:47.520 | You know, I mean, Ronnie Coleman.

01:57:49.320 | I mean, I'm sure you remember

01:57:50.420 | when the "Unbelievable" came out,

01:57:52.320 | his DVD back in like 2001,

01:57:55.200 | where he's tossing around 200 pound dumbbells

01:57:57.680 | and he's doing seven, 800 pound squats,

01:58:00.080 | 600 pound front squats.

01:58:01.480 | And everybody's just looking at this like, my God.

01:58:03.800 | And then you watch somebody like Phil Heath train,

01:58:05.840 | who again, one of the greatest Mr. Olympia's of all time.

01:58:09.280 | Phil mostly did machines,

01:58:11.840 | but he built obviously a great amount of muscle.

01:58:14.880 | Now people will say, well, they're on steroids.

01:58:17.280 | All those guys.

01:58:18.280 | - Yeah, it's all controlled.

01:58:19.760 | - Trust me, it's an equal playing field

01:58:22.120 | 'cause they're all doing it, right?

01:58:24.200 | - And the research shows anywhere from whatever,

01:58:27.320 | you know, five to 30 repetitions can generate hypertrophy

01:58:30.540 | as long as the final few repetitions are really hard

01:58:33.760 | and volume is adjusted.

01:58:37.120 | I really like-

01:58:38.100 | - There is no hypertrophy rep range

01:58:39.460 | like people used to think of as,

01:58:40.520 | oh, it's like six to 15 reps is hypertrophy.

01:58:43.300 | Now I think practically it makes sense

01:58:45.080 | to do a lot of your sets in that range

01:58:47.720 | because if you're trying to do 30 reps

01:58:49.840 | getting close to failure,

01:58:50.680 | I mean, gosh, I'm gonna run out of breath

01:58:52.120 | if I'm doing any kind of compound.

01:58:52.960 | - Also if you work out in a-

01:58:55.120 | - It's a little boring for me.

01:58:56.240 | - Yes, and if you work out in a gym

01:58:58.000 | where there are other people, like be kind.

01:58:59.480 | You know, like other people are gonna need

01:59:00.800 | the space and the equipment.

01:59:02.080 | So, you know, it could take forever, you know,

01:59:04.380 | 10 sets of 30, like that's impolite.

01:59:09.380 | So we're only half kidding there.

01:59:12.760 | One of the more common questions

01:59:14.600 | is about training for people 50 years old and older.

01:59:20.480 | And I love the fact that we're talking

01:59:24.080 | so much about strength.

01:59:25.080 | This seems to be one of the key evolutions in this field.

01:59:28.320 | Again, in my opinion,

01:59:30.280 | the people who've come through this podcast as guests,

01:59:33.000 | Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, yourself,

01:59:36.200 | Andy Galpin, who now has his own podcast,

01:59:39.480 | The Perform Podcast.

01:59:40.320 | Like more and more discussions about strength

01:59:42.480 | and training for strength for the general public,

01:59:44.700 | not just people who want to be power lifters.

01:59:46.200 | So I think there's a lot of carry over there.

01:59:47.720 | And I think the more that people hear us say

01:59:50.560 | that resistance training can be really powerful

01:59:53.520 | for health and longevity and getting strong

01:59:56.120 | is one of the best things you can do

01:59:57.480 | for your health and longevity,

01:59:59.040 | injury protection, et cetera.

02:00:00.440 | Peter Ortega has talked about this

02:00:01.880 | and it's not just about building muscle.

02:00:04.680 | Want to know how they should adjust their training,

02:00:09.680 | if at all, if they are 50 and older.

02:00:12.740 | So obviously one of the key things to getting

02:00:15.080 | and staying in great shape over time,

02:00:16.640 | I always say is avoid getting hurt.

02:00:19.080 | Could we say, okay, don't try anything too novel

02:00:22.280 | and crazy without easing into it.

02:00:24.000 | Could we also perhaps-

02:00:25.680 | - But I would say that goes for anybody, quite frankly.

02:00:28.320 | - Okay, could we also say perhaps find the movements

02:00:32.060 | that you can do without injury

02:00:33.560 | and just keep doing those over and over?

02:00:35.440 | Is there any evidence that mixing up the exercises

02:00:39.880 | is important, meaning doing new movements?

02:00:42.440 | Or if you find two or three movements

02:00:44.040 | that work well for you, can you just stick with those

02:00:45.780 | and just work on progressive overload?

02:00:47.560 | - I think you can stick with those.

02:00:48.800 | I think, you know, muscle,

02:00:50.920 | the whole concept of muscle confusion,

02:00:53.280 | muscle knows tension and how long it's under that tension

02:00:56.240 | and for how many sets it's under that tension.

02:00:57.720 | It doesn't, it's not like, well, this is a,

02:01:00.640 | I can tell that this is an incline bench press

02:01:03.040 | versus an incline dumbbell.

02:01:04.320 | I mean, you know, you might move

02:01:05.800 | through different ranges of motion and whatnot,

02:01:07.400 | but the tension on the muscle is the tension on the muscle.

02:01:11.440 | So what I'd say to people is,

02:01:12.640 | I think most people probably change up things too much

02:01:16.560 | because there is like a neurological adaptation

02:01:21.560 | to doing a specific exercise where you get stronger at it.

02:01:25.120 | And so now you're using more load,

02:01:26.480 | you can create more mechanical tension.

02:01:28.400 | But if you're always changing things up,

02:01:30.640 | you might not take advantage of that full, you know,

02:01:33.400 | kind of neurological adaptation.

02:01:35.760 | But if you're always doing the same exercises,

02:01:39.800 | it's too easy to get comfortable and fall into,

02:01:42.200 | well, did I do three sets of 10

02:01:44.120 | and I always do three sets of 10 and I use this weight?

02:01:46.840 | And that's what I do.

02:01:48.120 | And now you're no longer progressively overloading.

02:01:49.760 | So I think there has to be a balance

02:01:50.920 | between enough changing of exercises

02:01:54.560 | to kind of promote some novelty,

02:01:56.400 | because as you know, novelty,

02:01:58.520 | there's a reward center in the brain for that,

02:02:00.480 | just changing something.

02:02:02.480 | And think about anytime you're gonna try a new workout,

02:02:05.280 | you get a little excited about it, you know?

02:02:07.040 | When I was gonna try Zach's way of training,

02:02:08.960 | you know, three years ago,

02:02:09.800 | I was like, oh, I was very, very excited about it, you know?

02:02:12.880 | So I think there is a place for that,

02:02:14.720 | but I think people tend to fall into a little bit too much

02:02:17.520 | of doing the same thing over and over

02:02:19.440 | or constantly changing things

02:02:21.360 | 'cause they're always chasing that novelty.

02:02:23.400 | And I think that the reality

02:02:24.440 | is probably somewhere in the middle,

02:02:25.440 | but specifically for over 50,

02:02:29.040 | I think whatever you can do with low pain level

02:02:34.520 | and be consistent with that you enjoy,

02:02:36.420 | that's what's best for you.

02:02:39.520 | I mean, I always tell the story,

02:02:41.480 | I had a client who, they loved CrossFit,

02:02:44.040 | they loved doing CrossFit.

02:02:45.320 | And they said, you know, I wanna build muscle

02:02:48.840 | and I know it's not the best workout for building muscle.

02:02:50.960 | I said, it might be for you

02:02:53.240 | because if you hate bodybuilding training

02:02:55.720 | and you're not motivated to go do it

02:02:57.640 | and you don't enjoy it,

02:02:58.800 | you're probably not gonna work hard at it.

02:03:01.000 | And so maybe for you a CrossFit workout

02:03:03.480 | is the best muscle building workout

02:03:05.480 | because if I try to get you to do something else,

02:03:07.000 | you'd hate it and would lose motivation.

02:03:09.360 | - Right, and it feeds back to that consistency principle

02:03:11.720 | that you talked about before.

02:03:13.080 | - Exactly, so when we look at like,

02:03:16.440 | I think this might be interesting

02:03:17.800 | for some of your listeners.

02:03:18.760 | So when we look at how much muscle you can build

02:03:23.120 | after a certain age,

02:03:24.400 | you can build the same amount of muscle

02:03:27.080 | as a percentage of your starting skeletal muscle mass, okay?

02:03:30.760 | So what I mean by that is once you're 50, 60,

02:03:33.280 | you've usually lost some muscle, okay?

02:03:35.360 | And if you've never lifted before,

02:03:37.080 | if you go into lift, as a percentage basis,

02:03:41.680 | it appears that you will still gain

02:03:43.520 | the same amount of lean mass.

02:03:44.920 | But for example, if somebody has 80 kilos

02:03:48.400 | of starting lean, most of your podcast listeners

02:03:51.200 | are USA, I assume.

02:03:52.080 | So let's say somebody has 150 pounds of lean mass

02:03:55.680 | when they start, just throwing a random number,

02:03:57.800 | and they gain 10% over a couple of years.

02:04:00.560 | Now they have 165 pounds of lean mass,

02:04:03.480 | they've gained 15 pounds, but the percentage is 10.

02:04:07.040 | If somebody starts and they have 100 and say,

02:04:09.660 | 20 pounds of lean mass, 10% of that is 12 pounds,

02:04:14.160 | they gained an absolute less amount,

02:04:16.880 | but as a percentage, it was similar or same.

02:04:20.640 | And we actually see that with women too.

02:04:22.280 | Women actually develop as a percentage

02:04:24.560 | of their starting lean mass,

02:04:26.400 | the same percentage increase in lean mass as men

02:04:28.960 | when they do the same level of hard training.

02:04:30.920 | So what I tell people who are,

02:04:33.040 | I'll have people say, well, you know,

02:04:34.480 | I'm too old to start resistance.

02:04:35.960 | No, no, now is the perfect time to start, right now.

02:04:40.960 | And honestly, it doesn't take a huge dose.

02:04:44.120 | I mean, if you wanna be like, you know,

02:04:47.040 | get into powerlifting and like compete at competition,

02:04:49.040 | yeah, now it takes a bigger dose, right?

02:04:50.760 | But what it takes to get,

02:04:53.560 | and I'm just gonna throw a number out,

02:04:54.680 | 80%, the majority of the benefits

02:04:57.120 | for health, strength, resistance training,

02:04:59.720 | you could probably get in three,

02:05:02.200 | four sessions of 30 to 40 minutes.

02:05:05.220 | You know, you don't have to have a huge input of time.

02:05:07.960 | And just look at the depression study we talked about.

02:05:10.120 | Obviously that's not like muscle and strength,

02:05:11.760 | but two sessions of 25 minutes,

02:05:14.720 | I mean, it is a absurdly low dose that you require.

02:05:19.000 | And I think a lot of people,

02:05:21.400 | I try to be careful about this too,

02:05:23.160 | we'll see how I train,

02:05:25.040 | which is two, three hours a day for five days a week,

02:05:28.560 | and think that's what's needed.

02:05:29.960 | No, no, that's what,

02:05:30.800 | I wanna go win a world championship.

02:05:32.920 | That's what's needed for that.

02:05:35.120 | It's not needed for you to build muscle and get stronger.

02:05:37.540 | And even when I was at grad school across the street,

02:05:40.520 | they did a study in frail elderly where they had them,

02:05:44.960 | basically they had trouble like standing up

02:05:47.200 | from a seated position.

02:05:48.040 | And by the end of a 12 week study of them,

02:05:49.800 | like progressively overloading them,

02:05:51.280 | which was basically like them just lowering the seat

02:05:53.480 | at first, right?

02:05:54.920 | And then maybe adding like a little bit of weight.

02:05:58.720 | They saw these people built muscle, built bone,

02:06:01.400 | got healthier, better quality of life.

02:06:04.600 | And these are people in their seventies.

02:06:06.600 | And there was a study in Australia

02:06:07.920 | that actually got on the news.

02:06:09.000 | Peter Atiyah talked about it with elderly women

02:06:12.880 | who I think they were above age 70.

02:06:16.440 | And there's some of them in there deadlifting

02:06:17.880 | like 150, like upper hundreds in deadlift, you know?

02:06:22.880 | It's incredible how,

02:06:26.280 | I took a class called

02:06:27.680 | Skeletal Muscle Structure, Function, and Plasticity.

02:06:30.760 | Your skeletal muscle is so adaptable.

02:06:35.180 | It is such an adaptable tissue.

02:06:37.400 | It's amazing.

02:06:38.520 | The same thing that can allow somebody to squat,

02:06:41.880 | Jesus Oliveira, shout out.

02:06:43.600 | Squat over a thousand pounds is the same tissue

02:06:47.560 | that can allow somebody to run a hundred miles

02:06:50.560 | like David Goggins.

02:06:52.240 | Think about that.

02:06:53.080 | That's really incredibly adaptive.

02:06:56.200 | And so what I'll tell the people,

02:06:58.480 | regardless of your age, your sex,

02:07:00.640 | whatever demographic you are in,

02:07:03.160 | resistance training for just a couple of times a week

02:07:05.760 | for a short period of time

02:07:07.780 | will drastically improve the prospects

02:07:11.600 | of your quality of life, your longevity.

02:07:13.880 | I mean, if we look at hand grip strength,

02:07:16.760 | we look at lean mass,

02:07:17.800 | they're all inversely associated with mortality,

02:07:20.620 | especially the older you get

02:07:22.080 | becomes a stronger association.

02:07:24.480 | And I always tell people, I'm like,

02:07:26.240 | it's not about the hand grip strength.

02:07:27.920 | This is a proxy for just strength overall, right?

02:07:30.920 | There was a study where they looked at pushups

02:07:32.440 | and found pushups were inversely associated with mortality.

02:07:35.560 | It's not that doing pushups is magic.

02:07:37.400 | It's that that is a proxy for that person being strong.

02:07:41.320 | And we focus so much of our attention,

02:07:43.400 | especially like on falls in the elderly, right?

02:07:45.760 | Well, if they had more bone mass,

02:07:48.480 | they wouldn't break their bones.

02:07:50.320 | What if they didn't fall in the first place

02:07:52.080 | 'cause they were strong enough

02:07:53.040 | and had good enough gait and balance to catch themselves?

02:07:55.760 | And oh, by the way,

02:07:57.080 | nothing better for increasing bone mass

02:07:59.000 | than resistance training.

02:08:00.680 | So I am a huge fan.

02:08:02.520 | And then we already talked about like the metabolic,

02:08:04.840 | like skeletal muscle.

02:08:06.400 | Gabrielle touched on it.

02:08:07.400 | It was one of the first things Don Lehman said

02:08:08.880 | when I came in his lab.

02:08:09.720 | He goes, "Skeletal muscle fits every definition of an organ.

02:08:14.040 | "And we don't talk about it like an organ.

02:08:15.780 | "We talk about it like it's this inner tissue

02:08:17.460 | "that just sits there, and it is not.

02:08:20.100 | "It sends out signals to other tissues.

02:08:22.140 | "It integrates signals from other tissues.

02:08:24.020 | "It is an endocrine organ."

02:08:26.080 | And so many people have unhealthy skeletal muscle.

02:08:31.280 | And if we treat, and what happens when you resistance train?

02:08:34.280 | What happens when you build muscle?

02:08:37.060 | Muscle is a metabolic sink.

02:08:39.040 | It is greedy, right?

02:08:40.840 | It's sucking up.

02:08:42.440 | It's incredible.

02:08:43.280 | You can take people who are type two diabetic,

02:08:45.920 | and if you get them on a slight calorie deficit,

02:08:47.760 | you get them to start exercising.

02:08:49.800 | It is incredible how fast their blood markers

02:08:52.600 | will start to resolve.

02:08:54.180 | Like they can still be obese,

02:08:55.700 | and you'll see their blood markers start to resolve

02:08:57.960 | within, like you'll see improvements in weeks.

02:09:00.160 | Lehman did a, I wanna say a 16-week study

02:09:03.520 | in either diabetic or pre-diabetic women

02:09:06.800 | back in like 2003, I wanna say.

02:09:09.800 | And he said within four weeks,

02:09:11.200 | he said we already saw these blood markers start to resolve.

02:09:13.600 | Like your HbA1c hasn't resolved,

02:09:15.760 | but a lot of these other markers started to resolve

02:09:17.520 | because at a fundamental level, at least in my opinion,

02:09:21.820 | and other metabolism people may disagree,

02:09:24.780 | I'm a big fan of Occam's razor,

02:09:27.960 | which is plainly stated, all things being equal,

02:09:33.200 | the simplest explanation is typically true.

02:09:36.080 | The actual hardcore scientific definition

02:09:40.240 | is the hypothesis that requires

02:09:42.520 | the least amount of assumptions is usually true.

02:09:44.920 | You're putting in so much energy into a system,

02:09:49.420 | and you're running out of places to put it.

02:09:51.820 | So you have skeletal muscle mass, you have liver,

02:09:54.700 | these other tissues in the periphery,

02:09:56.200 | and then you have adipose tissue.

02:09:58.280 | And did you know they actually show people

02:10:00.120 | who have more adipocytes are actually more resistant

02:10:03.640 | to type two diabetes.

02:10:05.760 | So they have more smaller fat cells

02:10:09.480 | that can soak up more of this stuff.

02:10:11.600 | And since type two diabetes

02:10:13.000 | is basically too much glucose in the blood, right?

02:10:16.720 | And a lack of insulin sensitivity,

02:10:19.540 | small adipocytes are more insulin sensitive.

02:10:24.000 | And so what happens is we,

02:10:26.260 | at least in adipocyte physiology,

02:10:30.160 | we used to think of adipose as also an inert tissue.

02:10:33.920 | And now we know that's not true either.

02:10:35.360 | - And lots of different cell types.

02:10:36.880 | We used to just think that there was brown, beige,

02:10:39.840 | and white fat cells, and subcutaneous, and intravisceral.

02:10:43.000 | Now they've done sequencing of different white fat cells,

02:10:48.000 | and like 25, probably now 50 different,

02:10:51.680 | I mean, different genetics among those cells

02:10:54.960 | that respond differently to insulin.

02:10:56.920 | I mean, fat is a very interesting

02:10:58.640 | and heterogeneous tissue. - It's really interesting.

02:11:01.240 | But most fat cells,

02:11:02.800 | at least based on the literature I've read,

02:11:04.400 | and again, I'm happy to have somebody correct me

02:11:05.680 | who's an expert in this,

02:11:06.520 | but they can expand to a certain point

02:11:09.380 | where it really becomes difficult for them to get bigger.

02:11:12.560 | The integrity of the cell,

02:11:13.680 | 'cause you still got a cell wall,

02:11:15.320 | you have a plasma membrane and everything,

02:11:16.960 | and you have an extracellular matrix

02:11:18.720 | that is scaffolding this fat tissue onto your body.

02:11:22.680 | And so at a certain size of adipocyte,

02:11:26.240 | it basically becomes,

02:11:27.600 | you just can't pack any more in there, okay?

02:11:29.920 | And so if you can't put any more in muscle,

02:11:32.520 | because muscle isn't, you're not active,

02:11:34.700 | and muscle's not moving and churning through substrate,

02:11:39.320 | and you can't pack any more into adipose,

02:11:41.600 | where does it wind up?

02:11:43.440 | It's in your blood.

02:11:45.080 | You can't get, and now when your blood levels,

02:11:47.520 | it's interesting because there are some people

02:11:49.040 | who have all these theories,

02:11:49.880 | but like one person, a researcher, was like,

02:11:52.040 | well, I think branched-chain amino acids

02:11:53.800 | actually cause insulin resistance,

02:11:55.120 | 'cause we see them elevated in the blood

02:11:57.280 | in type 2 diabetes.

02:11:59.160 | And I was actually in a,

02:12:00.280 | it was in a, I was a grad student

02:12:03.040 | watching this person present,

02:12:04.200 | and I put my hand up, I said,

02:12:06.160 | isn't everything elevated in the blood in type 2 diabetes?

02:12:08.600 | You know, why are we picking on branched-chain amino acids?

02:12:12.200 | So you do have some people

02:12:13.280 | who too can become type 2 diabetic who aren't obese.

02:12:16.040 | They tend to have not as many fat cells,

02:12:22.680 | which sounds like it'd be an advantage.

02:12:25.160 | And if you're lean, or sorry,

02:12:27.240 | if you are not overeating, right,

02:12:30.440 | and getting enough exercise in,

02:12:32.260 | it probably is an advantage

02:12:33.560 | because you have less overall fat mass.

02:12:35.520 | But you are going to reach that critical mass

02:12:38.080 | of an adipocyte of about 100 microns, I think it is,

02:12:41.680 | faster because your overall fat cell number.

02:12:45.160 | So at the same fat mass,

02:12:47.080 | your fat cells are bigger,

02:12:48.520 | and bigger fat cells are less insulin-sensitive.

02:12:52.220 | In fact, one of the treatments for type 2 diabetes,

02:12:54.720 | sulfonylureas, I think they're called,

02:12:58.040 | they're PPAR gamma agonists.

02:12:59.680 | They actually increase the production of fat cells.

02:13:01.520 | They create new, small fat cells.

02:13:03.840 | Now you have a place to put stuff,

02:13:05.640 | and you lower your blood glucose.

02:13:08.400 | So very-- - It's a reservoir.

02:13:10.720 | - Exactly, and I'm overgeneralizing, to be sure.

02:13:14.560 | And again, I hope if I've butchered anything,

02:13:17.380 | somebody will come in and correct me.

02:13:18.680 | - They will.

02:13:20.360 | - But what's amazing is this stuff in the blood,

02:13:25.360 | you just gotta get stuff moving.

02:13:28.500 | Like, 'cause you start doing exercise,

02:13:30.900 | start controlling your calories a little bit, guess what?

02:13:34.360 | You're oxidizing things to the Krebs cycle.

02:13:36.680 | You're going through glycolysis.

02:13:39.260 | You can now start to pull things in, right?

02:13:41.220 | You're using this substrate.

02:13:42.780 | You can start to pull things in.

02:13:43.980 | And because you're pulling things in,

02:13:46.140 | now adipose can start to release

02:13:48.720 | some of its free fatty acids into the blood,

02:13:51.580 | or some of its triacylglycerides into free fatty acids

02:13:54.140 | into the bloodstream, which can also facilitate this.

02:13:57.560 | So using muscle, you are, it is a partitioning effect,

02:14:02.560 | and it doesn't take long to start lowering this glucose,

02:14:08.900 | blood lipids, these things in the blood.

02:14:11.100 | It can actually resolve, you know, at least those markers

02:14:15.260 | can start resolving themselves pretty quickly,

02:14:16.740 | which is why, you know, when we look at weight loss,

02:14:19.880 | what level of weight loss they say is clinically relevant,

02:14:22.100 | it's only 5%, right?

02:14:24.120 | Which you'll have obese people,

02:14:27.080 | and they'll say, well, 5% weight loss,

02:14:28.680 | you see these big benefits in like blood lipids

02:14:32.240 | and metabolic health.

02:14:34.280 | You wouldn't think with just 5% weight loss

02:14:36.680 | you would get that, but you do,

02:14:39.800 | because you're just giving a little bit of space

02:14:43.800 | to get that stuff in the blood out.

02:14:45.080 | Now, again, this is my, I want to be very clear.

02:14:48.180 | This is not a proven thing.

02:14:50.820 | I feel pretty strongly that this explains a lot,

02:14:55.700 | but again, this is my personal opinion

02:14:58.680 | about how these diseases develop and whatnot.

02:15:00.980 | But it is, I think it's relatively simple.

02:15:03.220 | - Yeah, using, thinking about muscle as an organ,

02:15:06.340 | thinking about feeding muscle,

02:15:07.760 | we talked about that earlier,

02:15:09.260 | thinking about moving muscle,

02:15:10.580 | and in particular training for strength,

02:15:12.140 | resistance training of different kinds,

02:15:13.780 | hypertrophy, yes, but I, you know,

02:15:16.140 | I'm kind of given a little bit of a biased vote

02:15:18.900 | for more strength training out there across the population

02:15:21.580 | for really for the longevity reasons.

02:15:23.820 | I mean, Peter Atiyah has pointed out

02:15:25.460 | that the percentage of people who die after a fall,

02:15:30.460 | not because of the fall itself,

02:15:32.300 | but because of a hip injury or a wrist injury,

02:15:35.300 | and then they go immobile,

02:15:37.980 | or they're just not exercising as much anymore,

02:15:39.900 | then they get an infection, and then it cascades.

02:15:42.060 | In fact, I had a conversation

02:15:43.020 | with one of my parents recently on their 79th birthday.

02:15:45.680 | I said, you know, in the next five, 10 years,

02:15:49.740 | your biggest risk is probably going to be going downstairs

02:15:54.100 | or stepping off a curb, not going up,

02:15:56.980 | but as Peter's pointed out, going down.

02:15:58.940 | So that eccentric movement, you know,

02:16:01.060 | being able to sustain a fall,

02:16:02.820 | being able to not fall, to catch yourself, so to speak.

02:16:05.460 | - Well, and practically you fall farther going downstairs

02:16:07.620 | than you do going upstairs. - Right, than going up.

02:16:08.580 | Exactly, and that pattern of falling while going down

02:16:11.700 | precedes a lot of infections that end up deadly, right?

02:16:15.740 | So, and, you know, hats off to Peter

02:16:19.100 | for really pointing out the relationship

02:16:20.420 | between those things,

02:16:21.260 | and to you for encouraging people to strength train.

02:16:23.580 | Also, I love the idea that I don't have to go to failure

02:16:25.580 | if I'm in strength training, 'cause I like training heavy,

02:16:27.240 | but the training to the point

02:16:28.940 | where the muscles are quaking,

02:16:30.660 | even though that's how I initially started training,

02:16:33.540 | 'cause I came up in the Mike Mentzer camp,

02:16:37.040 | I actually find that it eats into my recovery

02:16:40.220 | in a way that maybe is a little more subtle,

02:16:43.040 | but meaningful nonetheless,

02:16:44.820 | which is that I feel fatigued later in the day.

02:16:47.380 | Whereas if I complete a training session

02:16:48.980 | where I can complete every rep,

02:16:50.460 | I notice I don't get into that quaking thing.

02:16:53.880 | I actually have a lot of mental and physical energy

02:16:55.780 | later in the day.

02:16:56.660 | - And it's psychologically and emotionally fatiguing

02:16:58.420 | as well.

02:16:59.260 | - Maybe this one could be out of a brief answer,

02:17:01.740 | or maybe not, I don't know.

02:17:03.580 | Are there true age-related changes in metabolism

02:17:06.480 | that are independent of decline in muscle mass?

02:17:10.300 | I saw a paper, I think it was published in "Science"

02:17:12.580 | a few years ago that said that metabolism

02:17:14.460 | actually doesn't slow that much as we age.

02:17:17.060 | Of course, total muscle mass-

02:17:18.300 | - So you mean BMR?

02:17:19.340 | - BMR, basal metabolic rate.

02:17:21.420 | In general, well, I should just say,

02:17:23.920 | up until that paper came out, I thought,

02:17:25.460 | okay, as we get older, our "metabolism slows."

02:17:28.260 | Then of course, we have to remember that puberty

02:17:30.140 | and childhood is sort of like being on

02:17:32.660 | performance-enhancing drugs in the sense that

02:17:35.140 | protein synthesis is just massive and ongoing.

02:17:38.840 | But let's just say from age 30 onward,

02:17:41.960 | let's say between 30 and 80,

02:17:43.480 | assuming that somebody's doing things

02:17:45.820 | to maintain muscle mass,

02:17:48.640 | is there any reason to believe that

02:17:50.280 | their basal metabolic rate actually goes down

02:17:52.620 | just as a function of age?

02:17:54.420 | - Yeah, you're citing the work from Herman Ponser

02:17:57.080 | and really great lab-looking energy expenditure

02:18:00.000 | that he does a lot of great stuff.

02:18:03.240 | And so that study was looking at several thousand people,

02:18:06.160 | I think, looking at their total daily energy expenditure

02:18:08.700 | and really found it's pretty flat

02:18:10.340 | from like age 20 to age 70.

02:18:12.220 | And then it kind of starts to go down,

02:18:14.000 | but you can tie it to the loss of lean mass.

02:18:16.740 | And same thing for basal metabolic rate

02:18:18.940 | when they do indirect calimetry.

02:18:20.760 | If you look at, and this goes for older people,

02:18:27.500 | also women versus men,

02:18:29.200 | and then also type two diabetics

02:18:32.580 | versus non-type two diabetics,

02:18:33.960 | obese versus non-obese,

02:18:36.060 | 80, I think the number is like over 80% of the variance

02:18:40.920 | in BMR is completely explained by the lean mass,

02:18:44.420 | by the amount of lean mass somebody has.

02:18:46.320 | And by the way, the last 20% probably is explained

02:18:49.240 | by where that lean mass occurs.

02:18:50.900 | Because liver, for example,

02:18:52.720 | is a more metabolically active tissue gram per gram

02:18:55.120 | than pretty much any other tissue.

02:18:57.120 | The skeletal muscle is more metabolically active

02:18:59.980 | than fat tissue,

02:19:02.060 | but for a lean tissue is actually

02:19:03.980 | somewhat like metabolically slow

02:19:06.100 | because it's turnover rate is only like 1% to 2% per day.

02:19:08.900 | - You just have a lot of it.

02:19:10.020 | - Yeah, right, right.

02:19:10.860 | But on an absolute amount of calories you burn,

02:19:12.940 | you burn a lot in muscle

02:19:13.780 | because you have so much of it.

02:19:15.380 | Great point.

02:19:16.220 | So things like gut, liver tissues per gram of tissue

02:19:21.260 | are very active.

02:19:23.060 | So yeah, just doesn't seem to be,

02:19:26.860 | for a long time, we spent so much time

02:19:29.200 | focused on the metabolism side of things

02:19:30.920 | when we're looking at aging,

02:19:31.960 | when we're looking at obesity,

02:19:34.480 | and we just didn't really find impressive stuff.

02:19:37.040 | So obese people don't have slower metabolisms on average.

02:19:40.520 | The research shows that actually on an absolute basis,

02:19:45.240 | they're faster than people who are normal weight.

02:19:47.920 | When you standardize for lean mass,

02:19:50.240 | it ends up being about the same.

02:19:52.360 | People who are type two diabetic, same thing.

02:19:54.840 | When you standardize for lean mass,

02:19:56.280 | if anything, they have a little bit faster BMR.

02:19:59.360 | And so if you think about it,

02:20:00.920 | it actually kind of makes a little bit of sense

02:20:02.200 | on a biochemical level

02:20:03.080 | because if you're insulin resistant,

02:20:04.600 | you're also insulin resistant in fat tissue, right?

02:20:07.280 | So like, okay, so it makes sense

02:20:10.320 | that maybe you waste some more energy

02:20:13.040 | because you're not able to put it

02:20:14.420 | where you wanna put it, right?

02:20:15.920 | So the people get upset about this

02:20:22.160 | because like, oh no, it's gotta be metabolism, metabolism.

02:20:25.880 | And then GLP-1 memetics have really kind of shown,

02:20:30.880 | no, the answer to this question

02:20:33.520 | is very much on the appetite side of things.

02:20:36.640 | It's like, we tried to make a bunch of different drugs

02:20:39.560 | that would increase metabolism.

02:20:40.760 | We tried to do all these things to increase metabolism

02:20:43.320 | and nothing seemed to really make a big difference.

02:20:45.960 | And then we came out with the most powerful

02:20:47.280 | appetite suppressants in the history of mankind

02:20:49.380 | and people are losing large amounts of weight

02:20:52.400 | and keeping it off.

02:20:53.800 | So I think people got too focused on that metabolism side

02:20:58.280 | or what I hear a lot of is from like post-menopausal women,

02:21:02.800 | I'll hear somebody say, my metabolism dropped.

02:21:05.780 | What probably happened, you're sleeping less,

02:21:10.880 | you're more stressed, you don't feel as good

02:21:13.000 | because the hormonal changes, you don't feel as good.

02:21:15.800 | And so you spontaneously became less physically active

02:21:18.220 | and didn't realize it because our NEAT,

02:21:20.160 | like our non-exercise activity thermogenesis,

02:21:22.160 | our non-purposeful physical activity that we do,

02:21:24.880 | fidgeting, pacing, is actually a large portion

02:21:28.040 | of our daily energy expenditure.

02:21:30.000 | And people get this wrong.

02:21:32.440 | You can't make yourself do more NEAT

02:21:35.120 | because then it's just exercise.

02:21:36.680 | If you're purposely doing it, it's exercise.

02:21:38.080 | - Bouncing your knee.

02:21:39.240 | - It's all subconscious, right?

02:21:41.040 | But if you're not sleeping as well

02:21:42.760 | and you're feeling worse, spontaneously,

02:21:44.880 | you'll just not move as much.

02:21:46.480 | And I know that people, that feels like there's a lot

02:21:49.680 | of judgment and shame associated with that,

02:21:51.880 | but it is the truth.

02:21:53.440 | It is a practical limitation and it may not be metabolism.

02:21:57.160 | I guess I'm a little bit pedantic with that,

02:21:59.040 | but it still contributes to your overall energy expenditure.

02:22:02.520 | And so again, they've looked at this and I mean,

02:22:07.520 | there is some evidence that like if your estrogen drops

02:22:09.880 | and you replace that with supplemental estrogen,

02:22:11.840 | that that can like help out with like maybe 50 to 100 calorie

02:22:15.000 | energy expenditure per day.

02:22:16.240 | So if you're replacing something

02:22:17.320 | that's like now clinically low.

02:22:19.480 | But my guess is that it would also drive more activity,

02:22:22.640 | feeling better, more activity,

02:22:23.880 | sleeping better, more activity.

02:22:25.720 | - And that's where it's hard to disconnect that, right?

02:22:28.760 | So yeah, I think metabolism wise,

02:22:31.480 | the results ended up being pretty underwhelming

02:22:33.360 | for all this stuff that we just assumed,

02:22:35.160 | well, if somebody's overweight,

02:22:36.920 | it's 'cause there's low metabolism.

02:22:38.800 | The research didn't pan that out,

02:22:41.080 | but I still think it was very interesting.

02:22:42.960 | And again, it speaks to like the power of the mind

02:22:45.520 | and the connection in the mind

02:22:46.880 | of how some of these drugs act.

02:22:49.720 | But I do tell people when they say,

02:22:51.640 | well, calorie deficit didn't work for me.

02:22:54.320 | And obviously my metabolism was messed up

02:22:57.360 | 'cause I had to get on Ozempic to lose weight.

02:22:59.840 | I'm like, well, it doesn't really do anything

02:23:03.600 | to metabolism like the speed of your metabolism.

02:23:07.120 | What happened is you just,

02:23:10.000 | you no longer mindlessly snack.

02:23:12.600 | You feel, you are now in touch with your satiety signals

02:23:17.600 | and that's why you're losing weight.

02:23:23.120 | And that's why these drugs, they work.

02:23:25.960 | - All right, so speaking of Ozempic, Munjaro and similar,

02:23:30.800 | let's talk about these drugs that are reducing appetite.

02:23:33.880 | And in fairness have allowed millions of people

02:23:38.120 | to lose substantial amounts of weight and keep it off.

02:23:41.720 | This topic tends to get people a little bit riled up

02:23:46.360 | on social media, because I think for some reason,

02:23:49.120 | people believe that if one gives these drugs the nod,

02:23:53.320 | you're essentially saying you don't need to exercise.

02:23:56.000 | But I didn't see anywhere or hear anywhere

02:23:58.640 | that the use of any compound, drug or otherwise,

02:24:02.720 | is mutually exclusive with taking good care of oneself

02:24:05.080 | in other ways too.

02:24:05.920 | So what are your thoughts on these compounds

02:24:07.440 | and what you're seeing out there?

02:24:09.080 | - I think my take is pretty balanced on this,

02:24:10.840 | which is I think they appear to be great tools

02:24:14.000 | for people reducing their intake and reducing body fat.

02:24:17.560 | And it functions through appetite.

02:24:19.240 | I mean, these drugs are GLP-1 mimetics.

02:24:22.520 | And so GLP-1 is a hormone secreted by the gut

02:24:26.040 | in response to feeding.

02:24:27.400 | And it acts on the gut as well as the brain

02:24:30.640 | to reduce appetite, slow motility.

02:24:35.640 | So it's a satiety hormone essentially.

02:24:39.560 | Now it has a very short half-life in the body.

02:24:41.640 | So the reason a lot of people will come out and say,

02:24:43.320 | "Well, there's things you can do naturally

02:24:44.880 | to increase your GLP-1."

02:24:46.880 | This is like talking about, I mean,

02:24:49.400 | yes, a BB gun fires a projectile

02:24:51.240 | and a tank fires a projectile,

02:24:52.720 | but there's a pretty big difference, right?

02:24:55.400 | So with GLP-1 mimetics, what's happening is

02:24:59.640 | they're taking that protein and changing out

02:25:02.780 | some of the amino acids in that protein.

02:25:06.000 | And it basically just gives a much longer half-life.

02:25:08.200 | That's why people can take it once a week

02:25:09.840 | or whatever it is,

02:25:10.680 | 'cause it just stays around much longer.

02:25:12.320 | And so if you think about the food environment we live in,

02:25:16.080 | which is free access to cheap, hyperpalatable foods,

02:25:20.480 | our brains for the most part are probably not equipped

02:25:24.920 | to regulate appetite in that environment.

02:25:27.520 | And it really actually is kind of incredible

02:25:30.660 | how resilient the human body is,

02:25:32.840 | because if you look at when the obesity crisis started,

02:25:35.360 | we already had ultra-processed foods available.

02:25:37.280 | We had cakes, cookies, all these sorts of things,

02:25:40.360 | but the difference was

02:25:42.720 | you had to go to the bakery and get it,

02:25:46.560 | or there had to be some small barrier, right?

02:25:51.440 | And then, I think kind of the barrier that got flipped

02:25:55.480 | was basically now, in the last 30 years,

02:25:59.760 | you can go anywhere and get access to cheap,

02:26:03.240 | ultra-processed, hyperpalatable, calorically-dense foods.

02:26:07.200 | And they just don't have the same effect on satiety

02:26:10.160 | that normal food does,

02:26:11.200 | where, like I have a Kevin Hall study at NIH

02:26:14.120 | where they took people from a minimally-processed diet

02:26:17.520 | and switched them to an ultra-processed diet,

02:26:20.040 | and they spontaneously increased their caloric intake

02:26:22.200 | by 500 calories a day, like overnight.

02:26:24.840 | That may sound like not a big deal to some people listening.

02:26:28.480 | That is a very big deal.

02:26:30.880 | - It's about a pound per week of increase in body weight.

02:26:34.240 | - Yeah, I mean-- - Assuming.

02:26:35.720 | - Assuming that there's no increase in energy expenditure,

02:26:38.000 | which we know happens over time.

02:26:39.160 | But with these GLP-1 memetics,

02:26:43.440 | they're slowing down motility,

02:26:45.380 | they're acting on the hypothalamus,

02:26:46.680 | they're reducing appetite, and it's a very powerful effect.

02:26:50.480 | Now, some of the side effects are nausea.

02:26:53.320 | Some people reported kind of like a, not freezing,

02:26:56.200 | but like too slow motility, essentially.

02:26:59.920 | So there's some GI side effects,

02:27:01.360 | which are kind of to be expected with something like this.

02:27:03.760 | And on one side, you've got,

02:27:07.080 | it's so funny how everything gets politicized these days,

02:27:09.640 | but on one side, you've got people saying,

02:27:10.880 | oh, these drugs have no side effects whatsoever,

02:27:13.640 | and heck, I think everybody should be on GLP-1s

02:27:16.600 | because we're not made to live in this food environment.

02:27:19.800 | And then on the other side, you've got people saying,

02:27:22.400 | well, this just obliterates the need for hard work,

02:27:25.000 | and these people don't take accountability,

02:27:26.560 | and I don't really think either of those messages

02:27:28.520 | are really useful.

02:27:29.360 | I think there's a lot of nuance here.

02:27:31.280 | And I mean, it's a drug, and every drug

02:27:34.280 | is gonna have side effects,

02:27:35.320 | some worse than others for different people.

02:27:37.960 | And so for some people,

02:27:39.320 | it's not gonna make sense to take it

02:27:40.560 | based on their lifestyle and side effects they get.

02:27:42.640 | But for other people, I did a post on this

02:27:45.320 | where I talked about how much weight people lose on average,

02:27:50.320 | and so many people in the comments said,

02:27:52.640 | I've lost 100 pounds, or I've lost 80 pounds,

02:27:54.640 | or whatever it is.

02:27:55.720 | - Taking Monjaro or something.

02:27:56.960 | - Yeah, one of these GLP-1 memetics.

02:27:58.600 | And again, going back to our conversation of big rocks,

02:28:01.880 | people worry about lean mass loss,

02:28:06.440 | they worry about, there was a study in, I think, rodents,

02:28:09.600 | where they saw an increase in thyroid,

02:28:11.720 | I wanna say thyroid cancer or something like that,

02:28:13.720 | but it was not really a physiological dose,

02:28:16.040 | and again, it's rodents.

02:28:17.500 | People say, well, we don't know

02:28:20.800 | what the long-term effects of these drugs are.

02:28:22.800 | Well, they've actually been around for diabetes treatment

02:28:26.900 | for a couple of decades now.

02:28:28.680 | But, I mean, do we know what they do in 50 years?

02:28:32.720 | I guess not, but we know what obesity does.

02:28:35.640 | So I'm gonna take Ron White's line,

02:28:38.120 | which is shoot the alligator closest to the boat.

02:28:40.060 | I think if somebody's very overweight or obese,

02:28:43.200 | and they've tried a bunch of different methods,

02:28:44.800 | and people say, well, they just haven't been consistent.

02:28:47.880 | Okay, so we can live in fantasy land,

02:28:50.680 | or we can live in the real world,

02:28:52.240 | which is maybe some people just need

02:28:54.160 | some more training wheels than other people, okay?

02:28:56.540 | If we could stop putting an ethical judgment

02:29:00.320 | on how easy or hard it is

02:29:03.280 | for certain people to do certain things.

02:29:05.600 | I mean, it's easy for me to say just be consistent

02:29:09.820 | because nutrition has never been a problem for me.

02:29:13.120 | I've never struggled with my weight,

02:29:14.920 | but I struggled in other areas of my life

02:29:18.440 | that why can't I just be more consistent?

02:29:21.580 | Why can't I just do the things I know I need to do?

02:29:24.320 | I'm sure you would feel the same way

02:29:26.600 | about certain things in your life where it's like,

02:29:28.060 | well, I know logically what to do,

02:29:29.300 | but it's hard for me to do it, right?

02:29:31.580 | And so if we look at the burden

02:29:35.540 | on the healthcare system of obesity

02:29:38.100 | and these type two diabetes,

02:29:39.820 | and then all the metabolic diseases associated with them,

02:29:42.660 | it's hard for me to imagine a scenario

02:29:46.180 | where this is not a big net positive, to be quite frank.

02:29:49.020 | Now, I wanna, this is, as my friend John Deloney says,

02:29:53.820 | it's both and, okay?

02:29:55.600 | Some people, this is really gonna help them,

02:29:59.760 | and it should be done in concert with lifestyle changes

02:30:02.020 | and lifestyle education,

02:30:03.600 | because we don't want people to go

02:30:05.440 | from eating a lot of a crappy diet

02:30:06.880 | to a little of a crappy diet, right?

02:30:08.960 | We want them to make better choices overall.

02:30:11.680 | But sometimes, again, habit coupling,

02:30:14.060 | people don't get motivated and then get results.

02:30:18.200 | People start getting results and then get motivated, right?

02:30:21.460 | And so a lot of times, people will start losing weight,

02:30:25.260 | and now they're motivated to go to the gym.

02:30:27.340 | They're motivated to eat better.

02:30:28.900 | It's, it is, it doesn't happen in a linear path.

02:30:32.100 | These things are kind of like, you know,

02:30:35.820 | like the opposite of a vicious cycle,

02:30:37.620 | where this is, you're getting into a good cycle, right?

02:30:39.940 | And a lot of people tend to fall into these categories

02:30:43.340 | where when things go bad, they go really bad,

02:30:45.780 | 'cause it's a vicious cycle.

02:30:46.780 | When things go well, they go really well,

02:30:48.100 | 'cause it's a good cycle.

02:30:50.200 | And so what I would say is with the concerns about GLP-1s,

02:30:53.660 | the one I hear most is loss of lean mass.

02:30:56.360 | So in studies, people who use GLP-1 medics,

02:31:00.180 | they lose like 30 to 40% of the weight from lean mass,

02:31:04.440 | which is a concern.

02:31:06.240 | But by the way, that is similar to the amount of weight

02:31:09.300 | from lean mass people use

02:31:10.900 | who diet without resistance training or exercise.

02:31:13.660 | So I don't think that it's a unique problem to GLP-1s.

02:31:17.700 | My guess is when we start getting studies

02:31:22.060 | that combine exercise with GLP-1s

02:31:24.780 | and look at lean mass retention,

02:31:27.860 | we'll probably see pretty similar results.

02:31:29.380 | So I'm not super worried about that.

02:31:31.260 | On a practical level, I can see some concern with it,

02:31:33.320 | because if you don't have much appetite,

02:31:35.080 | you're usually not selecting protein

02:31:37.140 | as kind of your first line of what you're gonna pick.

02:31:41.460 | And additionally, fiber,

02:31:45.460 | you're not usually gonna select as your first.

02:31:47.200 | So I think, again, these are great kind of like,

02:31:52.200 | if we think about like training wheels,

02:31:54.540 | I think these are great training wheels for people.

02:31:56.820 | And through natural, just having less appetite,

02:32:00.620 | people start controlling their intake better,

02:32:04.100 | and then all these other habits

02:32:05.320 | start to fall into place for some people.

02:32:07.780 | And I talked to a friend who, she's a nurse practitioner,

02:32:12.700 | and she tried a GLP-1 mimetic,

02:32:17.700 | just 'cause she's like,

02:32:18.880 | "I'm a nurse, I wanna see what this stuff is like for me."

02:32:20.960 | And then she talked to a lot of her clients.

02:32:24.520 | And the anecdotal feedback that popped up a lot was,

02:32:28.500 | it stopped the food noise in my head.

02:32:32.740 | I wasn't thinking about food all the time.

02:32:34.980 | I just stopped thinking about it so much.

02:32:37.720 | And if you look at obesity, I mean, again,

02:32:40.160 | it really is on the appetite side.

02:32:41.760 | We know that obese people have lower sensitivity

02:32:44.820 | to satiety signals.

02:32:46.440 | They get a greater reward from food.

02:32:49.140 | Like I just posted about a study the other day

02:32:50.600 | where they gave a milkshake to people,

02:32:53.120 | and they didn't really see a dopamine response.

02:32:55.720 | And, but in people with binge eating disorder,

02:32:59.600 | when they give something like that,

02:33:00.640 | they do see a dopamine response.

02:33:02.200 | So a lot of it is contextual, right?

02:33:04.800 | And so I think a lot of it's contextual around obesity

02:33:08.360 | of, okay, these are people who get a greater reward

02:33:12.080 | from food on average.

02:33:13.400 | They're thinking about food more often.

02:33:16.040 | They've probably also dealt with people telling them

02:33:18.920 | in their entire life or however long

02:33:20.620 | that they need to lose weight.

02:33:21.600 | And so food is always on their mind

02:33:24.140 | in one thing or another.

02:33:25.280 | It's kind of like in "Ghostbusters" where they say,

02:33:28.440 | don't think about anything bad.

02:33:29.900 | What's the first thing you're gonna do?

02:33:30.740 | You're gonna think about something bad, right?

02:33:32.680 | And so trying to calm down food noise

02:33:36.440 | while knowing that you need to eat less food

02:33:38.760 | is probably pretty difficult.

02:33:40.360 | So on the whole, I think these drugs are positives.

02:33:45.360 | I think it's gonna lower the healthcare burden.

02:33:48.280 | And I think it's gonna help a lot of people.

02:33:50.560 | And the other thing I'll say is like,

02:33:51.800 | there's been a lot of pushback in the fitness industry

02:33:53.640 | by fitness influencers.

02:33:55.960 | - Why do you think that is?

02:33:57.320 | Like, as if it's gonna take their jobs away.

02:34:00.480 | It's like the same way that people fear AI.

02:34:02.440 | Like it somehow get like, like this stuff is here to stay.

02:34:05.200 | It benefits many, many people.

02:34:06.480 | I feel this way about these GLP-1 mimetics and I,

02:34:11.360 | mimetics, excuse me.

02:34:12.720 | And I feel the same way about AI.

02:34:14.360 | It's like these things could be,

02:34:15.720 | yes, potentially used for evil, but you know, also for good.

02:34:20.560 | - If I think back about when I might've had

02:34:22.840 | that sort of reaction, I was in my early twenties.

02:34:24.880 | And that's when I thought obesity was a choice.

02:34:28.160 | I still think there is personal responsibility

02:34:30.880 | involved in obesity.

02:34:33.720 | But I think my feelings about obesity at that time

02:34:38.240 | were, if somebody's obese, they're making the choice.

02:34:43.240 | They don't care about the stuff they eat

02:34:47.240 | that mindfully they are choosing to eat these foods

02:34:52.240 | knowing this is gonna be the outcome.

02:34:54.280 | - Like self-inflicted.

02:34:55.360 | - Yeah.

02:34:56.200 | And I don't think that's the case at all.

02:34:58.240 | I think a lot of people's habits and behaviors

02:35:01.000 | are on autopilot, you know?

02:35:04.120 | I can remember very clearly,

02:35:05.240 | I dropped my kids off at school one day.

02:35:07.480 | I stopped at 7-Eleven to fill up with gas

02:35:10.280 | and like grab something from the store, a drink.

02:35:13.000 | And there was somebody,

02:35:13.920 | there was a obese woman in front of me

02:35:15.560 | and she was getting two slices of pizza at 8 a.m.

02:35:19.200 | And at first I kind of had that knee-jerk response

02:35:21.640 | of, oh, she's so lazy, of course she'll.

02:35:23.880 | And then I thought, you know what?

02:35:26.440 | This is probably something she's done for a long time.

02:35:29.120 | This is probably a very habit where she goes to 7-Eleven,

02:35:31.720 | she gets pizza.

02:35:32.560 | Or on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. she's around this area

02:35:35.680 | and she goes to 7-Eleven and gets pizza.

02:35:38.280 | And maybe not,

02:35:39.120 | but I think a lot of people out there are like that

02:35:41.080 | where their habits and behaviors

02:35:42.480 | are very much on autopilot.

02:35:43.720 | It's not this mindfulness that we think they're doing.

02:35:48.400 | And that translates into other areas.

02:35:52.240 | And the other thing I realized is I'm like,

02:35:55.320 | it can't be laziness, like all of it,

02:35:57.760 | because there's obese people who are very successful

02:36:01.200 | in other areas of their life.

02:36:02.440 | So they don't want to work hard.

02:36:04.400 | And so, at least not for everybody,

02:36:07.280 | that can't be the explanation.

02:36:08.600 | And I think with fitness influencers

02:36:11.000 | or people who have, you know, they've worked hard,

02:36:14.320 | they've built a good physique.

02:36:15.680 | It's almost like, how dare you get results

02:36:19.440 | without doing it yourself?

02:36:22.360 | I did this without any help, you know?

02:36:25.320 | And the reality is you might've had help

02:36:27.960 | because your upbringing might have not been food focused.

02:36:32.360 | You might not have had a mother

02:36:33.840 | who was always on you about food,

02:36:35.760 | or you might not have had parents who shamed you

02:36:39.200 | if you didn't clean your plate.

02:36:40.680 | You might've had genetics that made you more sensitive

02:36:43.840 | to satiety signals.

02:36:44.680 | You might've had a phenotype where if you overeat,

02:36:47.200 | you tend to just become spontaneously more active.

02:36:49.160 | That's part of the obese resistant phenotype.

02:36:51.560 | And so you might've had an advantage

02:36:53.640 | and you just didn't realize it.

02:36:55.040 | So I think if we could just get away

02:36:56.960 | from the judgment of stuff and look at,

02:36:59.120 | take the judgment, all that stuff out of it.

02:37:03.160 | Does this seem to help people?

02:37:05.040 | And is it gonna be a net positive on society?

02:37:08.280 | Thomas Sowell said, in order to make compassionate policy,

02:37:10.960 | you have to have dispassionate analysis of the data.

02:37:14.240 | And the data says this is gonna be massive for our society,

02:37:17.920 | and it's a huge benefit.

02:37:19.920 | So regardless of my personal feelings of,

02:37:23.000 | "Hey, somebody should be able, look at Ethan Suplee,

02:37:25.400 | lost 300 pounds doing it through all hard work and exercise."

02:37:28.400 | I'm pretty sure I've talked to Ethan about this

02:37:32.320 | and he said, "I think this is great."

02:37:34.960 | Because it's hard to get people to believe

02:37:39.800 | if people believe what they can see.

02:37:42.720 | And so if they start seeing results, then they can buy in.

02:37:47.720 | And yeah, I think overall it's a net positive.

02:37:52.640 | So, I mean, maybe studies will come out in 10 years

02:37:56.080 | and people are falling over dead from this stuff

02:37:57.960 | and we'll say, "Oh, whoopsies."

02:37:59.400 | But I mean, you have to shoot the alligator closest

02:38:02.560 | to the boat and right now the biggest burden

02:38:05.040 | on our healthcare system,

02:38:06.440 | I think I'm correct in saying this,

02:38:08.560 | and the biggest threat in a lot of ways

02:38:12.360 | is how metabolically unhealthy our society is getting.

02:38:16.320 | - Yeah, I think also when people hear about these drugs,

02:38:19.400 | they think about the person who's slightly overweight

02:38:22.200 | or who is already fit, who wants to be even thinner.

02:38:25.600 | And that's not what we're talking about here.

02:38:27.880 | And I have a good friend who is an air traffic controller.

02:38:32.080 | He works very, very hard, very stressful job, obviously,

02:38:36.280 | high consequence job, and he's very overweight.

02:38:40.080 | He's gotta be more than 300 pounds by a significant margin.

02:38:44.600 | And he's really struggled over the years.

02:38:46.680 | And for years he talked about getting his,

02:38:48.520 | quote unquote, "stomach stapled."

02:38:49.760 | You know, that's sometimes referred to that way.

02:38:52.240 | Couldn't afford the surgery, this sort of thing.

02:38:53.800 | And I asked him about it.

02:38:54.640 | I was like, "What's that about?"

02:38:56.320 | He's like, "I just need something that's gonna allow me

02:38:58.400 | "to move without pain or a little bit less pain."

02:39:02.560 | Every time he tries exercising, he injures himself.

02:39:04.920 | And he's probably going about that incorrectly,

02:39:06.720 | but he doesn't have a lot of time.

02:39:09.120 | And he literally has lives in his hands.

02:39:11.980 | He's married now, he may have kids soon.

02:39:14.000 | So I haven't spoken to him recently about these drugs,

02:39:16.720 | but to me, it seems like that's the perfect candidate

02:39:19.040 | for these drugs.

02:39:20.000 | If he could eat less with more ease and lose some weight,

02:39:25.000 | and then also start exercising,

02:39:27.280 | I think that'd be a significant win for him.

02:39:28.920 | So scenarios like that are what I think of.

02:39:31.360 | And then also, you know, it's a mostly free world

02:39:34.100 | in many places, not all.

02:39:37.040 | So if people can afford these things

02:39:38.680 | and they wanna take them,

02:39:39.520 | like who am I to say they shouldn't take them?

02:39:41.280 | You know, I feel like the amount of judgment involved

02:39:45.040 | to say that somebody should or should not use a drug

02:39:47.680 | is that's safe and potentially helpful for them

02:39:51.120 | is like kind of, I mean, that's almost offensive in a way.

02:39:56.120 | - Yeah, I mean, if you had something that,

02:39:58.200 | like if we came out with a drug and it's like,

02:40:00.920 | it looks like for a lot of people,

02:40:02.560 | this can fix opioid addiction, right?

02:40:05.760 | - Yeah, you'd give them that drug.

02:40:06.600 | - We'd be shouting from the rooftops and celebrating, right?

02:40:10.060 | We wouldn't say, well, you just gotta gut it out

02:40:11.520 | and work harder.

02:40:12.360 | You know, you just gotta want it more.

02:40:14.200 | It's like, no, like there's some,

02:40:16.280 | yeah, there is some personal responsibility there

02:40:19.200 | and there are choices and things that can be made,

02:40:22.280 | but why are we trying to make this barrier

02:40:24.200 | so high for people?

02:40:25.240 | Like, let's lower this barrier.

02:40:26.880 | - I love that.

02:40:27.720 | On the other side of the coin,

02:40:30.000 | you've been pretty vocal elsewhere

02:40:33.080 | about the fact that sugar is not a drug, you know,

02:40:38.080 | because sometimes people will say, you know,

02:40:40.800 | sugar is a drug.

02:40:41.640 | I would sort of put in the soft argument for my side,

02:40:45.480 | soft argument that highly processed foods,

02:40:48.640 | or let's just call them high density of taste foods, right?

02:40:53.160 | That combine, you know, processed carbohydrates and fats,

02:40:56.200 | you know, at high heats that can be consumed in, you know,

02:40:59.000 | where you can easily consume several thousand calories,

02:41:01.360 | you know, almost unconsciously, right?

02:41:04.520 | I mean, unless you're asleep or in a coma,

02:41:06.720 | you can just pop these things in your mouth and keep going.

02:41:09.160 | I don't even know if they taste that good,

02:41:10.260 | but people just keep going.

02:41:11.640 | That there's a bit of kind of lack of awareness

02:41:14.040 | and compulsivity to them.

02:41:15.840 | Very different than addiction, of course,

02:41:17.920 | because people aren't necessarily going out

02:41:19.280 | and robbing people.

02:41:21.760 | But maybe just touch on your view of sugar as a substance.

02:41:26.760 | We're not talking about the sugar in fruit.

02:41:29.360 | We're talking about candy, ice creams, desserts,

02:41:32.200 | "hidden sugars."

02:41:34.520 | What are the real risks of these things

02:41:36.520 | if people are consuming them still within the confines

02:41:40.320 | of their daily caloric needs?

02:41:42.160 | So they're not eating excess calories.

02:41:45.140 | What's the deal with sugar?

02:41:48.160 | - Okay, so this is where it's very important

02:41:51.240 | to give the appropriate context and nuance.

02:41:52.880 | I'm glad you set it up the way you did.

02:41:54.920 | So I always tell people when it comes to almost anything,

02:41:59.920 | have guidelines, not hard rules.

02:42:02.040 | Because hard rules will get you to do things

02:42:03.920 | that are kind of dumb, right?

02:42:06.200 | So for example, if you say,

02:42:07.480 | "I'm never gonna eat processed foods."

02:42:10.240 | Well, whey protein is processed,

02:42:11.640 | but if you look at the data on whey protein,

02:42:13.320 | it improves metabolic health,

02:42:14.600 | it increases lean mass, body composition,

02:42:17.300 | even lowers inflammation.

02:42:18.600 | So I mean, if we're just gonna say all processed foods

02:42:21.480 | are bad, well, isn't then whey bad?

02:42:24.000 | So guidelines in that nature, same thing for sugar,

02:42:27.280 | because obviously, okay, well, added sugar,

02:42:30.520 | it doesn't have a big satiety benefit.

02:42:35.280 | It's calorically dense, makes food very palatable.

02:42:38.840 | I'm gonna come back to that 'cause it's contextual.

02:42:41.340 | But fruit has sugar and biochemically,

02:42:45.720 | not really that different.

02:42:46.840 | I mean, if you're talking about sucrose, okay,

02:42:48.720 | it's a molecule of glucose and fructose.

02:42:51.040 | Okay, a lot of fruits have glucose and fructose in them.

02:42:55.400 | So if sugar has some inherent

02:42:59.720 | lipogenic biochemical toxicity,

02:43:05.560 | addictive quality, whatever,

02:43:07.520 | we should see similar effects

02:43:09.780 | across different sources of sugar.

02:43:12.680 | And we don't see that, right?

02:43:14.920 | And even when it comes to some of the processed foods,

02:43:19.860 | people don't realize what goes into

02:43:21.640 | making something hyperpalatable is complex.

02:43:25.280 | It's not just sugar, it's not just fat,

02:43:28.700 | it's not just sodium, it's texture, mouthfeel,

02:43:33.200 | you mentioned temperature, all these things matter.

02:43:37.480 | And in fact, there was actually a study a while back

02:43:40.680 | that suggested that texture might actually

02:43:42.840 | make a bigger impact on the palatability of a food

02:43:46.680 | than even the sugar content.

02:43:48.500 | And let's take it more from a mechanistic level,

02:43:52.680 | from your example.

02:43:53.520 | If you're in the confines of your calories, what happens?

02:43:58.520 | I would say a high sugar diet is still not ideal

02:44:01.980 | because it's gonna be hard to get enough fiber

02:44:04.000 | in a high sugar diet.

02:44:04.840 | But I, long time ago, beginning of grad school,

02:44:08.840 | I was under the opinion that sugar

02:44:10.660 | and high fructose corn syrup were calorie per calorie,

02:44:15.480 | more fattening, metabolically unhealthy.

02:44:18.160 | Now I was at a graduate mixer

02:44:20.480 | with a professor named Manny Nakamura, who was at Illinois,

02:44:24.160 | and he had done some of the feeding studies in rats

02:44:27.080 | with fructose and seen these weird metabolic effects, right?

02:44:30.980 | And I overheard him having a conversation

02:44:34.120 | with another professor, and I was shocked by what he said,

02:44:37.600 | 'cause he's the one that did some of this research.

02:44:40.160 | And the other professor said,

02:44:41.120 | "So high fructose corn syrup is bad, and fructose is bad."

02:44:44.240 | He goes, "No, it's really just the calories that are in it.

02:44:47.840 | "It's easy to overconsume.

02:44:49.280 | "People consume it through soda,

02:44:50.840 | "and they just eat too much."

02:44:52.240 | And the guy was like,

02:44:53.460 | "Well, you showed all these things in these mice."

02:44:55.920 | He goes, "We fed 'em like over 50% of their calories

02:44:58.500 | "were from pure fructose.

02:45:00.000 | "That's pretty much impossible to get through the diet,

02:45:02.320 | "unless you're literally doing nothing but drinking soda."

02:45:05.220 | And he said, "We showed a pathway,

02:45:09.040 | "but that's not practical

02:45:11.160 | "in terms of the application to humans."

02:45:14.600 | And so I got curious,

02:45:16.120 | and I really started going down the literature on sugar,

02:45:18.460 | trying to say, "Okay, is he right about this?

02:45:21.100 | "Is it really not calorie per calorie more damaging

02:45:25.640 | "than non-sugar carbohydrate?"

02:45:27.960 | When you look at sugar intake,

02:45:31.840 | it is associated with increased levels of inflammation.

02:45:35.660 | It's associated with obesity.

02:45:37.240 | But there are what we call confounding variables,

02:45:42.240 | which is people who eat a lot of sugar

02:45:44.800 | tend to eat a lot of calories.

02:45:46.560 | So if we look at, here's my favorite,

02:45:49.400 | human randomized control trials,

02:45:51.540 | where we control total calorie intake and sugar intake,

02:45:54.560 | what do we see?

02:45:55.960 | And probably the best example of this

02:45:57.520 | was a study from Surwit back in, I want to say, 1997.

02:46:01.160 | And the reason I'm gonna pick out this study

02:46:03.320 | is 'cause it had the best controls in it.

02:46:05.600 | So they provided all the food to participants.

02:46:07.760 | The protein, carbohydrates, and fats were all the same.

02:46:11.620 | It was a, I think it was a 1,200 calorie diet.

02:46:15.340 | And they provided all these meals for six weeks

02:46:17.040 | and looked at fat loss and some blood lipids

02:46:19.520 | and those sorts of things.

02:46:21.680 | And they found that,

02:46:23.040 | so one group was getting over 100 grams of sugar a day.

02:46:25.760 | I think it was around, I mean,

02:46:27.040 | it was based on some like body weight

02:46:29.440 | and energy expenditure stuff.

02:46:30.480 | But I think it was around like 110 grams of sucrose per day.

02:46:35.160 | Right?

02:46:36.000 | A lot of sugar.

02:46:37.640 | Other group, like around 10.

02:46:39.620 | So 10 times different sugar.

02:46:41.200 | And at the end of the study,

02:46:44.880 | there was no difference in fat loss.

02:46:46.420 | There was no difference in lean mass retention.

02:46:48.440 | There was no difference in almost any marker they looked at.

02:46:51.360 | The only difference they saw,

02:46:53.080 | all the blood markers improved.

02:46:54.580 | The only difference they saw

02:46:56.240 | was that LDL cholesterol improved a little bit better

02:46:59.400 | in the low sugar group.

02:47:00.640 | And that is probably a function

02:47:01.920 | of the fact that the low sugar group had more fiber.

02:47:04.280 | We know fiber can bind to cholesterol

02:47:06.960 | and lower LDL cholesterol in the blood.

02:47:08.920 | So when I saw that, I was like, oh man.

02:47:11.920 | And then when I looked through all these other studies

02:47:13.660 | with similar kind of controls,

02:47:15.860 | they pretty much show the same thing across the board

02:47:18.040 | on metabolic health, on inflammation.

02:47:22.800 | Like inflammation really isn't different

02:47:24.460 | if calories are controlled with high sugar

02:47:26.280 | versus low sugar, as long as you're getting enough fiber.

02:47:29.640 | - What about feelings of satiety because-

02:47:32.400 | - Well, that is the real downside if you're eating a lot.

02:47:35.640 | Like if you're eating a 1200 calorie diet

02:47:37.480 | and 400 calories are coming from pure sugar,

02:47:39.360 | I mean, you're probably gonna be kind of hungry, right?

02:47:41.400 | - Yeah, I'd be extremely hungry.

02:47:42.720 | I mean, I consume artificial sweeteners for the record,

02:47:45.720 | but there are enough data

02:47:47.160 | and I have enough experience with them

02:47:48.680 | to know that sometimes they will curb my appetite.

02:47:52.480 | Like they'll get me over the bump,

02:47:54.280 | but I've come to associate,

02:47:56.200 | it's probably just pure paired placebo association,

02:47:59.240 | if there is such a thing, where if I drink a Diet Coke,

02:48:02.160 | pretty soon after that, I wanna eat something.

02:48:04.220 | Now I've challenged that by not eating something

02:48:06.600 | 'cause I have pretty good discipline and it passes.

02:48:10.160 | But I think I've come to associate the sweet taste

02:48:13.440 | with wanting to eat something.

02:48:14.560 | And nothing to me is more delicious,

02:48:16.200 | well, there are many things,

02:48:17.080 | like a Diet Coke and a slice of pizza from New York,

02:48:19.760 | or a Diet Coke and a burger,

02:48:21.120 | or there are these food associations,

02:48:23.760 | but I don't think for instance,

02:48:25.440 | that sweet taste necessarily stimulates appetite.

02:48:28.920 | But I can imagine if I only had,

02:48:30.640 | as you said, 1200 calories a day to eat,

02:48:32.920 | and I'm getting 400 of those calories from sugar,

02:48:36.200 | like you said, there's not gonna be much,

02:48:37.600 | I better be eating a lot of broccoli as well,

02:48:39.960 | or else I'm gonna be pretty hungry,

02:48:42.880 | just based on my learned relationships

02:48:45.760 | between sweet taste and food consumption.

02:48:49.400 | - What I tell people is,

02:48:50.440 | I would focus less on like sugar intake.

02:48:53.720 | I mean, if you wanna focus on added sugars, that's fine.

02:48:56.600 | Focus on calories, protein and your fiber content, right?

02:48:59.400 | 'Cause if you're getting enough fiber,

02:49:01.440 | it's gonna be hard to eat a lot of junk doing that, right?

02:49:04.840 | And when we look at the sugar intake and calorie levels,

02:49:09.840 | all that kind of stuff,

02:49:15.920 | actually a great example would be the case of Dr. Mark Halb.

02:49:19.400 | Are you familiar with him?

02:49:20.440 | He's at Kansas State, he's a nutrition professor.

02:49:23.880 | In 2011, he got the name, the Twinkie Diet Professor.

02:49:28.520 | I'm not sure if you saw this, but he--

02:49:31.480 | - I know about the Twinkie defense.

02:49:33.880 | - Right, so he asked his students

02:49:36.960 | what they thought mattered more for fat loss,

02:49:40.400 | the calories you eat or the food choices you make.

02:49:42.800 | And they said, most of them said food choices.

02:49:45.800 | And he said, okay, let's do an experiment.

02:49:48.400 | Do you think if I do an 1800 calorie diet

02:49:51.080 | from ultra processed foods exclusively,

02:49:54.760 | that I will lose weight and get healthier?

02:49:57.640 | And most of the students said no.

02:49:59.120 | And so for 12 weeks, he ate 1800 calories.

02:50:01.800 | He called it originally the 7-Eleven diet.

02:50:03.520 | He basically was like,

02:50:04.360 | if I couldn't get the 7-Eleven, I didn't need it.

02:50:06.640 | Now the caveat is he had a multivitamin

02:50:08.800 | and he had some whey protein

02:50:10.280 | so that he was getting enough protein

02:50:11.440 | 'cause it's hard to get protein

02:50:12.500 | from some of those ultra processed foods.

02:50:14.500 | But he ate 1800 calories and he lost 27 pounds

02:50:20.920 | and all of his blood markers improved

02:50:22.360 | and his insulin sensitivity improved.

02:50:24.160 | Now, that seems crazy to a lot of people,

02:50:28.920 | but for those people who have worked

02:50:31.440 | and looked at blood work with weight loss and whatnot,

02:50:34.360 | I mean, it's not that surprising.

02:50:36.240 | That is one of the biggest levers for metabolic health.

02:50:40.200 | And so when they asked him afterwards,

02:50:43.840 | like what a great diet.

02:50:46.120 | Like you could eat all this junk food.

02:50:48.040 | And he goes, well, not really.

02:50:49.600 | Like it's 1800 calories of junk food.

02:50:52.240 | It goes really fast.

02:50:53.840 | I was pretty hungry.

02:50:54.980 | And honestly, like at first week it was like,

02:50:57.880 | oh, this is kind of nice.

02:50:58.960 | And then after that, I was like, you know,

02:50:59.920 | I'd really like just a really big salad, you know,

02:51:02.120 | just something satiating.

02:51:04.040 | So again, no solutions, only trade-offs.

02:51:06.940 | There is a benefit to being able to go,

02:51:09.060 | well, if I can fit it into my calories, it's okay.

02:51:13.720 | As long as I get enough fiber and protein.

02:51:16.040 | Yeah, the trade-off is it's a high budget cost, right?

02:51:21.040 | Same thing with people's, you know,

02:51:24.720 | the data on like moderate alcohol consumption

02:51:26.840 | shows that it doesn't impede fat loss.

02:51:28.520 | It doesn't, if you account for the calories in it.

02:51:30.680 | But I'll tell people like, hey, do you really like,

02:51:33.280 | if you have like two craft beers,

02:51:34.800 | do you really wanna spend four or 500 calories

02:51:36.780 | on like 24 ounces of fluid

02:51:38.760 | that's not gonna impact your satiety at all?

02:51:41.160 | And so I think a lot of people view this

02:51:45.120 | from a very black and white lens, right?

02:51:47.800 | Where it's like, oh, Lane says, or this person says,

02:51:51.520 | I can eat sugar and lose fat,

02:51:53.960 | so I can eat as much sugar as I want.

02:51:55.400 | No, no, no, no, no.

02:51:56.600 | 'Cause there are practical limits to this, right?

02:51:59.080 | But take somebody like me, right?

02:52:00.800 | If my calorie intake is my budget,

02:52:03.540 | I train two, three hours a day.

02:52:07.520 | My maintenance calories are anywhere

02:52:09.040 | from 33 to 3,400 calories a day,

02:52:11.120 | which is a not crazy amount,

02:52:12.920 | but a healthy amount for somebody of my size.

02:52:15.180 | I have a decent size budget, right?

02:52:18.040 | If I can still get my protein in, get my fiber,

02:52:22.640 | hit my micronutrient targets,

02:52:24.720 | and I have calories left over for energy filler,

02:52:27.720 | sure, just like if somebody makes a million dollars a year

02:52:30.800 | and they wanna go buy a sports car,

02:52:32.960 | it's not a great investment.

02:52:34.320 | It's not a good investment at all.

02:52:36.120 | Why wouldn't they just bank every single cent they make?

02:52:38.120 | Well, because maybe for them,

02:52:40.600 | having that little reward motivates them

02:52:45.080 | to keep doing what they're doing

02:52:46.200 | and making that level of money, right?

02:52:48.260 | But if you're making,

02:52:49.720 | let's take loans out of it, right?

02:52:51.040 | If you're making $100,000 a year,

02:52:53.360 | does it make sense to spend $90,000 on a sports car

02:52:56.240 | if it means you can't pay your mortgage

02:52:57.960 | and you can't save money for retirement,

02:52:59.440 | you can't meet your obligations?

02:53:01.380 | No, it doesn't make sense, right?

02:53:03.440 | And so if you're a small woman, small lean mass wise,

02:53:08.120 | who is trying to lose some weight,

02:53:11.680 | does it make sense if you're eating 1,200 calories a day

02:53:14.280 | to lose weight to spend 300 calories of that

02:53:17.200 | on some ultra processed junk food?

02:53:20.520 | I don't think it does.

02:53:23.340 | But if you're an Olympic athlete

02:53:26.280 | who's burning four or 5,000 calories a day,

02:53:30.160 | good luck eating that level of calories

02:53:32.680 | from good minimally processed foods,

02:53:35.320 | you're going to feel full all the time.

02:53:37.120 | - There does seem to be a kind of a requirement in books,

02:53:42.120 | sometimes even in podcasts,

02:53:43.960 | or to take a stance, like to be anti something.

02:53:46.460 | Because saying, you know,

02:53:48.600 | what I personally believe based on my read of the data

02:53:50.960 | is that most people should strive to get

02:53:53.680 | anywhere from 70 to 90% of their food

02:53:58.680 | from non-processed, minimally processed quality foods.

02:54:02.620 | And then allow some space for the, you know,

02:54:05.640 | some processed food, highly processed foods

02:54:07.520 | and sweets and things like that.

02:54:08.960 | But mostly to get the macros right,

02:54:11.400 | as we've described them earlier.

02:54:13.000 | And what the range will depend on age,

02:54:15.920 | will depend on activity level,

02:54:18.280 | will depend on prior health history.

02:54:19.800 | I mean, there's some people who have enough issues

02:54:23.540 | that relate to diet and lack of exercise

02:54:27.480 | that when I've seen them get it right

02:54:30.040 | and undergo such incredible transformations

02:54:32.680 | that like, I also know these people's capacity

02:54:35.740 | to fall off the train.

02:54:37.180 | - Right.

02:54:38.020 | - And you want to say, you know,

02:54:38.840 | maybe make that number a hundred percent

02:54:39.940 | so you never go back.

02:54:40.780 | 'Cause I've seen them slip before

02:54:42.280 | and then the guilt and then they come back, excuse me.

02:54:44.580 | So there are two ways to look at it.

02:54:45.700 | One is you tell people, listen,

02:54:46.980 | you don't have to be perfect, right?

02:54:48.740 | 'Cause if perfection is the goal, you're going to fall off.

02:54:51.180 | But then there are those individuals

02:54:52.560 | like severe alcoholics who quit drinking.

02:54:54.880 | You don't say like,

02:54:55.720 | "Hey, like you can have a beer on Christmas."

02:54:57.540 | You don't say that, right?

02:54:59.060 | It's all or none.

02:55:00.240 | But anyway, here we're getting into the psychology of it.

02:55:03.260 | - But I think that that's what you're saying right there

02:55:06.300 | is that's where the individualization comes in, right?

02:55:10.060 | Like it's contextually dependent

02:55:13.060 | and it's dependent on the individual

02:55:14.660 | and what makes sense for them.

02:55:18.060 | And I think we, as people,

02:55:21.660 | if we find something that works for us,

02:55:23.780 | we're a little bit too quick

02:55:26.220 | to want to evangelize everyone else around us

02:55:29.420 | because we do want to help,

02:55:31.860 | we do have good intentions for the most part,

02:55:34.180 | and we overgeneralize.

02:55:36.020 | And I've, you know, for me, again,

02:55:38.220 | like counting macros, flexible dieting,

02:55:40.520 | when I dealt with a little bit of binge eating

02:55:42.980 | when I was young, when I first got into bodybuilding,

02:55:44.940 | 'cause I was trying to, you know, eat clean,

02:55:47.840 | and I was in college,

02:55:49.700 | so my buddies would order pizza or whatever,

02:55:50.980 | and I ended up eating like an entire pizza by myself, right?

02:55:53.980 | And so once I allowed myself to just have that,

02:55:57.180 | the foods I wanted in moderation,

02:55:59.380 | I just got brutally consistent, right?

02:56:02.220 | So that, for me, that was the switch that flipped,

02:56:07.100 | but other people, that may not be the right solution.

02:56:10.820 | And I think we make a bunch of,

02:56:13.740 | well, that diet worked for me,

02:56:14.700 | and we assume physiology,

02:56:16.900 | when actually I think it's much more psychology

02:56:19.740 | and just trips that compliance algorithm

02:56:21.940 | in somebody's head and it makes sense,

02:56:23.820 | and if we could just be willing to say more often,

02:56:28.560 | hey, this is what I do, but I like this,

02:56:30.780 | and you don't have to do it, maybe try it.

02:56:34.020 | - Yeah, oh, and everyone struggles with different things,

02:56:36.900 | and everyone finds certain things easier.

02:56:38.740 | Like I'm non-alcoholic, I'm an adult,

02:56:41.340 | so I can have a drink or two, I just don't like it,

02:56:44.020 | so everyone assumes because I did this episode on alcohol

02:56:46.280 | that I'm like anti-alcohol.

02:56:47.420 | Like I'm like, if you're an adult and you're non-alcoholic,

02:56:50.040 | you don't have issues with, you know,

02:56:52.060 | alcohol use disorder or something like,

02:56:53.840 | you might guess, like just know the data, right?

02:56:56.240 | But there are certain things like steak,

02:56:59.860 | I'm never giving up.

02:57:01.380 | Like you could tell me it takes 10 years off my life,

02:57:04.060 | and I'm not going to give it up.

02:57:05.140 | I'll do other things to offset whatever that, you know,

02:57:08.980 | decrease in longevity might be.

02:57:10.760 | I don't think that that's a real thing,

02:57:13.140 | but I'm just not going to give it up.

02:57:14.380 | It's central to my enjoyment of life, period.

02:57:17.640 | Speaking of which, when,

02:57:19.640 | if one really wants to wade into the waters

02:57:22.400 | of strong opinions and conflicting data,

02:57:25.040 | we covered this a bit last time you were on the podcast,

02:57:27.240 | but the questions were replete

02:57:31.320 | with requests to discuss seed oils.

02:57:34.960 | - I'm sure.

02:57:35.780 | - Seed oils.

02:57:36.620 | And I must say this whole thing about seed oils

02:57:38.560 | has really gotten in my head.

02:57:40.400 | Even though I'm a scientist,

02:57:42.240 | like the other day I went to my sister's for dinner

02:57:44.800 | and she made a really nice dinner.

02:57:46.880 | It was for our mom's birthday.

02:57:48.040 | And then she made a really nice salad

02:57:50.080 | and I love fruits and vegetables.

02:57:51.260 | So it was like salad.

02:57:52.100 | And then I looked and I was like,

02:57:52.920 | she's made this out with like grapeseed oil.

02:57:54.680 | And I was like, why do you use grapeseed oil

02:57:56.000 | instead of olive oil?

02:57:56.840 | And she's like, well, I ran out of olive oil.

02:57:58.360 | And I found myself like looking at the salad,

02:58:01.400 | like, is this safe to eat?

02:58:02.880 | And I was like, I heard your voice in my ear.

02:58:05.280 | I also heard Paul's voice in my ear.

02:58:07.100 | Salad, you know, it was all these people.

02:58:07.940 | And I thought, well, I ate the salad, by the way.

02:58:10.120 | I really enjoyed it.

02:58:10.960 | It was good.

02:58:11.800 | Grapeseed oil doesn't taste as good to me as olive oil.

02:58:14.520 | I generally like try and use olive oil, butter,

02:58:17.220 | things like that when I cook.

02:58:19.400 | But what's the deal with seed oils?

02:58:23.300 | I understand that they are calorically dense.

02:58:26.240 | You told us that last time.

02:58:27.220 | I understand people tend to over-consume them

02:58:28.920 | and then blame them for a bunch of things

02:58:30.440 | that are not related to their seed oil-ness

02:58:32.520 | rather than their calorie containing-ness.

02:58:35.800 | These aren't real words, of course, but you get the idea.

02:58:38.320 | But are there any data out there that have your,

02:58:43.320 | you know, ears kind of pricked up to the possibility

02:58:46.320 | that, assuming equal calories,

02:58:48.660 | that there might be something bad about seed oils,

02:58:52.140 | or is there zero?

02:58:52.980 | And there's no pressure here to answer one way or the other.

02:58:55.020 | Not that you would respond to pressure from me anyway.

02:58:57.580 | - So I think it's all about making

02:59:01.700 | the appropriate apples to apples comparison, right?

02:59:04.620 | 'Cause if we're looking at addition studies

02:59:07.260 | of, you know, adding something to a diet,

02:59:10.100 | adding omega-6s, linoleic acid,

02:59:14.620 | linoleic acid, whatever,

02:59:16.100 | well, if you're adding those, you're adding calories,

02:59:20.100 | which is a confounding variable, right?

02:59:22.360 | So ideally what the real question is,

02:59:24.900 | 'cause the debate tends to be,

02:59:26.980 | the people who are anti-seed oil

02:59:28.620 | tend to be very pro-saturated fat.

02:59:30.380 | And so the question really is,

02:59:33.060 | okay, if we swap out these things in a one-to-one ratio,

02:59:38.060 | what is the outcome, right?

02:59:40.420 | So not, like, when outcome I mean metabolic health,

02:59:44.720 | inflammation, those sorts of things.

02:59:47.620 | So in the studies, I have yet to find

02:59:52.400 | a good human randomized control trial

02:59:56.840 | where they give polyunsaturated fat

02:59:59.520 | in place of saturated fat, you know,

03:00:02.200 | exchanged at a one-to-one ratio,

03:00:04.020 | and see negative, like, actual outcomes.

03:00:09.320 | - What about swapping with monounsaturated fats?

03:00:12.120 | Like, why are we talking about seed oils

03:00:13.980 | versus lard and butter?

03:00:15.560 | Why aren't we talking about seed oils versus olive oil?

03:00:18.240 | - Yeah, that's, I've looked less into that

03:00:20.720 | just 'cause people ask that question yet less,

03:00:23.020 | but it seems like both PUFAs and MUFAs

03:00:28.080 | are better than saturated fat

03:00:29.880 | in terms of metabolic health

03:00:31.080 | and risk of cardiovascular disease, those sorts of things.

03:00:33.960 | - Does anyone have a problem with olive oil?

03:00:37.840 | - I'm sure you could find somebody with a problem.

03:00:38.920 | - Okay, well, I shouldn't be right.

03:00:40.320 | - There's water now.

03:00:41.920 | - Terrible way for me to pose the question.

03:00:43.680 | Is there any reason to think,

03:00:45.760 | like, for the person who isn't sure about seed oils

03:00:48.720 | 'cause they've just heard enough negative things,

03:00:50.520 | even if there's no basis for it, like me,

03:00:53.160 | who's like, I like butter,

03:00:54.520 | and I also assume that eating too much butter

03:00:57.400 | might not be good for me

03:00:58.360 | just 'cause I'm a rational human being

03:01:00.640 | based on my read of the data anyway.

03:01:03.440 | So I have some butter, yes, but I like olive oil.

03:01:05.920 | Olive oil's tasty, I'm told it's good for me.

03:01:08.800 | - Is there any knowledge about anything in olive oil

03:01:11.960 | that says, listen, even if you consume it

03:01:15.120 | in concert with your caloric thresholds,

03:01:18.340 | meaning you're not eating too many calories,

03:01:20.120 | is there anything bad in olive oil?

03:01:22.080 | - I'm not aware of anything, but I will say,

03:01:24.760 | like, if you extend the logic of the seed oils crowd

03:01:28.440 | or anti-seed oils crowd,

03:01:29.440 | which actually I'm going to make a new logical fallacy,

03:01:32.080 | which is just appeal to seed oils.

03:01:34.080 | 'Cause so many times that I've laid out this data,

03:01:36.920 | I have people go basically like have a freak out

03:01:40.560 | and go, but seed oils, how dare you defend seed oils?

03:01:43.120 | And I'm like, I'm not defending them,

03:01:45.000 | I'm just talking about data.

03:01:46.440 | - People on X, when I put out questions

03:01:49.400 | for your coming on this episode,

03:01:50.800 | literally there were multiple people

03:01:52.480 | that claim that you are paid off by big seed oil.

03:01:57.480 | And I was just like, I have to laugh out loud.

03:01:59.440 | I was like, there might be a lot of companies

03:02:01.160 | that are large that make seed oils,

03:02:03.200 | but I guarantee they're not paying

03:02:05.920 | Lane Norton to say what he's saying.

03:02:08.400 | - So I find this actually very funny

03:02:10.440 | as somebody whose research was funded

03:02:11.880 | by the National Dairy Council, the Egg Nutrition Center,

03:02:15.280 | and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association,

03:02:18.120 | that somehow I would be the person who would be,

03:02:22.960 | you know, and all these things act in opposition too.

03:02:26.120 | It's like, well, you think I'm pro seed oil,

03:02:29.800 | but then over here I've been defending meat

03:02:32.400 | with this thing, right?

03:02:34.320 | And then over here I've been defending,

03:02:36.920 | sorry, defending is the wrong word,

03:02:38.280 | discussing the data on sugar, which by the way,

03:02:40.720 | those would be in opposition to each other

03:02:42.800 | 'cause you're-- - And you're very pro fiber.

03:02:44.560 | - Right, right. - So, yeah.

03:02:46.240 | - So, and even when I talk about saturated fat,

03:02:48.280 | I don't like say it's toxic and it's gonna do,

03:02:50.280 | I say, hey, it raises LDL cholesterol,

03:02:52.640 | which is an independent risk factor for heart disease.

03:02:54.680 | I'm just discussing it, right?

03:02:57.160 | So, I'll say what I said online,

03:02:59.960 | which is I don't defend nutrients.

03:03:02.320 | They don't need defending.

03:03:03.320 | There's not ethical considerations here.

03:03:05.400 | If you want to eat them,

03:03:06.320 | I don't think you're less of a person.

03:03:08.320 | And I find it curious that some people get so emotionally

03:03:13.000 | and just like ethically entrenched

03:03:18.000 | around certain nutrients.

03:03:20.040 | So the logic goes something like,

03:03:22.360 | well, you have these multiple double bonds,

03:03:24.920 | and so they can be oxidized.

03:03:27.440 | And so that oxidation is gonna cause

03:03:29.800 | an increase in inflammation,

03:03:31.260 | which is gonna cause heart disease and cancer, okay?

03:03:34.040 | Well, olive oil is a monounsaturated fat.

03:03:36.320 | It still has a double bond.

03:03:37.720 | So by that logic, it would still be worse

03:03:39.880 | than saturated fat.

03:03:40.880 | So when we look at trading out,

03:03:46.240 | and MUFAs would fall in this too, I believe.

03:03:49.200 | If you look at the cohort data,

03:03:50.960 | polyunsaturated fats substituted for saturated fats

03:03:53.800 | have a stronger effect on reducing heart disease

03:03:55.720 | than monounsaturated fats.

03:03:58.880 | But monounsaturated fats do still tend to have

03:04:03.200 | an effect of reducing the risk of heart disease

03:04:05.160 | compared to saturated fat.

03:04:08.040 | - Okay, so that would be trading out butter and lard

03:04:11.520 | and meat fats for more olive oil.

03:04:14.560 | - Right, and just to add some nuance to it,

03:04:16.840 | not all saturated fat is created equal.

03:04:18.440 | There are like stearic acid, I believe,

03:04:20.200 | doesn't raise LDL cholesterol.

03:04:22.880 | But in general, saturated fat is gonna be something

03:04:25.560 | that raises cholesterol more.

03:04:26.400 | It also, again, and I'm thinking of several

03:04:29.600 | randomized control trials where they feed the same calories,

03:04:33.400 | they feed the same amount of fat,

03:04:34.640 | and they just have people either eat, you know,

03:04:36.880 | saturated fat or polyunsaturated fats.

03:04:40.800 | You see either neutral or positive effects on inflammation.

03:04:44.920 | You see neutral positive effects on liver fat.

03:04:47.520 | You see neutral positive effects on basically

03:04:49.680 | overall metabolic health and insulin sensitivity.

03:04:52.280 | So again, and Paul actually counted this one time,

03:04:56.280 | and he cited a study looking at, I think it was,

03:04:59.360 | I don't wanna say it wrong, but it was like

03:05:01.400 | giving Omega-6s and they saw an increase

03:05:02.940 | in lipid peroxidation.

03:05:04.840 | I don't think they were comparing it to saturated fat.

03:05:07.160 | I could be wrong.

03:05:08.480 | But again, this is an example of a mechanism, right?

03:05:11.480 | So lipid peroxidation mechanism.

03:05:13.280 | We can try to project what that might mean down the road,

03:05:17.440 | but when we look at actual levels of inflammation,

03:05:20.420 | actual risk for cardiovascular disease,

03:05:22.660 | actual insulin sensitivity, actual levels of liver fat,

03:05:26.660 | these are outcomes.

03:05:28.140 | We can actually, if we're worried about those,

03:05:30.220 | we can actually measure them.

03:05:32.240 | And again, some studies show no difference.

03:05:35.040 | Some studies, some of the studies I've seen

03:05:36.840 | on like inflammation between polyunsaturated fats

03:05:40.960 | and saturated fats don't really show a difference

03:05:44.540 | in inflammation, but I'm not aware of any

03:05:46.580 | that show it going in the opposite direction

03:05:48.560 | where substituting in polyunsaturated fats

03:05:50.660 | actually raises inflammatory markers like CRP and IL-6,

03:05:54.180 | those sorts of things.

03:05:55.300 | And actually one of the things I tell people

03:05:57.700 | when they're worried about, you know,

03:05:59.700 | fructose activates the novel lipogenesis in the liver.

03:06:02.420 | And I'm like, well, here's this study

03:06:04.180 | where they overfed fructose and saturated fat

03:06:06.420 | by the same amount and saturated fat increased liver fat

03:06:08.980 | by 70% more than fructose.

03:06:11.280 | So if you're worried about fructose,

03:06:13.740 | you better really be worried about saturated fat.

03:06:16.240 | Now again, both, that's an overfeeding study.

03:06:19.060 | They were eating excess calories, but again,

03:06:21.700 | calorie per calorie, saturated fat was worse for liver fat.

03:06:24.700 | So that's kind of where I land on it.

03:06:31.380 | I just, you know, maybe I'm missing some data,

03:06:35.780 | but when you're looking at these studies,

03:06:39.420 | again, I'm looking at not one study, not two studies,

03:06:43.700 | I'm looking at 50 studies

03:06:46.160 | or however many studies there is on the topic.

03:06:48.240 | And I go on this forest plot, where do they land?

03:06:52.820 | And when they're almost all on one side or neutral,

03:06:57.780 | I feel pretty confident

03:06:59.180 | that that's something not to worry about, right?

03:07:01.100 | So let's take another discussion to tie this in.

03:07:04.060 | I think this will help people understand

03:07:05.260 | how I come to a conclusion about this sort of stuff.

03:07:08.100 | So I do not necessarily think red meat is carcinogenic,

03:07:11.660 | even though the IRC has classified it

03:07:14.780 | as probably carcinogenic, right?

03:07:17.100 | Because when you look at the studies,

03:07:21.380 | you can find studies that associate red meat with cancer,

03:07:24.280 | and you can find studies

03:07:25.180 | that show no association of red meat with cancer.

03:07:28.740 | And so it's kind of all over the place.

03:07:30.840 | Now, there's probably more

03:07:31.980 | that show the association than don't,

03:07:34.580 | but when you look at like studies

03:07:36.820 | where they control for overall diet quality,

03:07:39.140 | so I'm thinking of a study out of Canada back in 2020,

03:07:42.540 | I think the author was Maximova, I wanna say.

03:07:46.000 | They looked at different levels of red meat intake

03:07:49.740 | and incidence of cancer,

03:07:50.900 | but also with different levels

03:07:53.100 | of fruit and vegetable intake.

03:07:54.940 | And so what they found was

03:07:55.980 | at low levels of fruit and vegetable intake,

03:07:58.220 | lower red meat consumption reduced the risk of cancer

03:08:01.940 | relative to higher red meat consumption.

03:08:04.140 | But at high levels of fruits and vegetable consumption,

03:08:08.340 | I don't think there was a significant difference,

03:08:10.660 | but actually the high level of red meat consumption

03:08:13.260 | was lower risk than low red meat, high fruit and vegetables.

03:08:17.140 | I believe I have that correct in terms of the absolute risk.

03:08:20.660 | And I don't know if it was statistically significant,

03:08:22.580 | but what that says to me is red meat is more of a proxy

03:08:27.140 | of poor overall diet quality.

03:08:29.100 | And if you control for that

03:08:30.380 | with some diet proxy of fruit and vegetable intake,

03:08:33.900 | you know, if you're eating a lot of red meat

03:08:35.540 | and a lot of fruit and vegetables,

03:08:36.900 | there's not really a whole lot of room in your diet

03:08:38.540 | for a bunch of crap.

03:08:39.480 | - You just described the way that I eat

03:08:41.860 | and that anytime a friend of mine,

03:08:43.220 | and this happens a lot,

03:08:44.460 | comes to me and has, you know, 20 to 50 pounds to lose.

03:08:49.380 | You know, well, make it as easy on yourself as possible.

03:08:51.980 | You can eat meat, eggs, vegetables, and fruit,

03:08:55.960 | and that's all you're gonna do for two months.

03:08:57.980 | And most of those guys in this case,

03:09:00.800 | they were guys, lost a substantial amount of weight

03:09:04.740 | and kept it off.

03:09:05.580 | They all exercised as well.

03:09:07.220 | And of course, it's caloric restriction related.

03:09:08.980 | - Yeah, hard to overeat those foods.

03:09:09.820 | - Yeah, but they're not touching pasta.

03:09:11.300 | They're not touching bread.

03:09:12.180 | They ask me all the things that, can I do this?

03:09:14.180 | And I just said, listen,

03:09:15.080 | if it wasn't in the list I just gave you,

03:09:16.420 | you're not eating it.

03:09:17.300 | Sounds restrictive.

03:09:18.540 | The good news about something like that

03:09:19.940 | is that fruit generally tastes good

03:09:22.260 | and steak is very satiating, it's delicious.

03:09:26.660 | If you don't like meat, I suppose this wouldn't work,

03:09:28.700 | but I don't think there's anything magic about that diet.

03:09:32.340 | It just gets people below their maintenance calories

03:09:35.780 | with relative ease.

03:09:38.060 | - Well, it's simple.

03:09:39.340 | You could probably still do it at a restaurant, right?

03:09:41.260 | 'Cause you just asked for meat and vegetables, right?

03:09:43.060 | - Socially compatible.

03:09:44.460 | - So there is some beauty in simplicity.

03:09:47.240 | There's beauty in what I do, which is I track everything

03:09:49.700 | and I can have whatever I want.

03:09:51.860 | You're gonna have to have some form of restriction

03:09:53.340 | to lose weight.

03:09:54.180 | You pick the kind of restriction

03:09:55.860 | that you can stick to, right?

03:09:57.900 | So bringing that all back.

03:10:00.260 | So you have this data that's all scattered on meat, right?

03:10:03.300 | And then let's look at something like dietary fiber, okay?

03:10:07.180 | 'Cause people say, well, you can't establish causation.

03:10:09.620 | This is, some people might say, well,

03:10:11.340 | the carnivores might say, well, it's all healthy user bias.

03:10:15.180 | If it was healthy user bias,

03:10:16.580 | there'd be some disagreement in the data

03:10:18.200 | and there's no disagreement in the data.

03:10:20.340 | I am not aware of any study looking at dietary fiber intake

03:10:24.100 | or fruit and vegetable intake

03:10:25.060 | that doesn't show reduced risk of cancer,

03:10:27.100 | reduced risk of cardiovascular disease,

03:10:28.860 | reduced risk of mortality, usually in a dose response.

03:10:32.580 | And it is very consistent.

03:10:34.940 | Now, some studies might show more of a risk reduction

03:10:37.660 | versus other studies.

03:10:38.940 | But if we're doing a line of a forest plot

03:10:41.380 | and this is risk reduction, this is increased risk,

03:10:44.140 | everything's on this side, right?

03:10:45.660 | - Eating more fruits and vegetables

03:10:47.340 | can only be good for you.

03:10:48.500 | - Right, so, and there's like kind of a dose response.

03:10:53.340 | So that's when I become,

03:10:54.940 | even without randomized control trials necessarily,

03:10:58.200 | that's when I get pretty confident,

03:11:00.340 | okay, this is a very consistent effect

03:11:02.340 | and there's a dose response

03:11:04.940 | and we're seeing it in a bunch of different populations

03:11:07.020 | across a bunch of different countries

03:11:08.540 | in a bunch of different labs.

03:11:09.700 | Okay, I feel confident.

03:11:11.380 | And so for somebody to make the claim

03:11:13.260 | that seed oils are toxic or that they're bad for you

03:11:16.060 | independent of the calories,

03:11:18.100 | I mean, you're basically relegated to using animal studies

03:11:23.100 | in vitro mechanisms and then epidemiology,

03:11:27.540 | which trying to like tie those all together,

03:11:31.180 | I mean, that's not really high quality evidence.

03:11:33.880 | Really high quality evidence is that you have the mechanisms.

03:11:38.880 | Okay, there's a mechanism, right?

03:11:40.280 | 'Cause if there's an outcome, there's a mechanism.

03:11:42.560 | The animal data agrees with it.

03:11:44.120 | There's a dose response.

03:11:45.880 | The human randomized controls trial supported

03:11:47.880 | and then the epidemiology supports it.

03:11:50.080 | Like in order for something

03:11:51.200 | to really truly be strong evidence, we need that.

03:11:54.040 | Now let's take our example of fiber again, right?

03:11:56.620 | Epidemiology supports it.

03:11:58.240 | We have mechanisms in terms

03:12:00.000 | of short chain fatty acid production,

03:12:01.640 | in terms of like insoluble fiber,

03:12:03.440 | moving, like getting food through the gut faster

03:12:06.280 | might be actually better because there's some,

03:12:09.620 | I don't wanna use this word lightly,

03:12:10.600 | but like some semi-toxic end products

03:12:13.280 | of like metabolism in the gut

03:12:15.360 | that if they stay around too long,

03:12:16.960 | it might have negative interactions

03:12:18.380 | with some of the colorectal cells.

03:12:20.640 | And that may be one of the reasons

03:12:22.360 | that insoluble fiber helps decrease the risk

03:12:24.360 | of colorectal cancer.

03:12:26.600 | So we have the mechanisms, the animal studies show it.

03:12:31.180 | When we do the human randomized control trials,

03:12:32.820 | looking at shorter term surrogate markers,

03:12:34.900 | they show it move in the right direction

03:12:36.540 | and the epidemiology is in the right direction.

03:12:39.020 | That's when I become very confident about something.

03:12:41.660 | So I'm not ready to say like,

03:12:43.140 | "Hey, seed oils are really, really good for you

03:12:45.340 | and you should have a bunch of them."

03:12:46.780 | I'm not saying that.

03:12:47.740 | Obviously they're calorically dense, right?

03:12:49.340 | People add oil to stuff and it adds calories.

03:12:51.600 | But anybody trying to claim

03:12:54.580 | that there's strong evidence that they're bad for you,

03:12:57.540 | we have very different definitions

03:12:59.300 | of what strong evidence is.

03:13:00.740 | And you have to apply your logic symmetrically.

03:13:04.820 | If you were going to use a certain level of logic

03:13:07.380 | for one thing, you have to apply it to another thing, right?

03:13:11.620 | And I'll give you an example of this.

03:13:14.280 | When they were talking about the cruciferous vegetables

03:13:18.660 | and isocyanthanates and it reduces iodine,

03:13:20.580 | I said, "Well, this person was advocating

03:13:24.380 | for a meat-based diet."

03:13:25.900 | And I'm like, "Okay, well, there's NUE5GC in meat,

03:13:30.900 | which by the way, they found antibodies

03:13:35.020 | for that in human thyroid."

03:13:37.820 | Now, I'm not saying that meat's gonna mess up your thyroid,

03:13:41.780 | but if you're worried about the stuff

03:13:42.940 | in cruciferous vegetables,

03:13:44.100 | don't you have to worry about it in meat too?

03:13:45.880 | Because if you're applying that logic symmetrically,

03:13:48.260 | I would actually argue that there's stronger evidence

03:13:50.220 | that you're worried about the NUE5GC in meat

03:13:52.820 | since you actually see those antibodies show up.

03:13:55.400 | So with the seed oil stuff, I'm like,

03:13:58.740 | "Okay, let's apply this logic

03:14:00.880 | to saturated fat for a moment, all right?"

03:14:02.980 | So do we have a mechanism?

03:14:06.540 | We do.

03:14:07.860 | Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol.

03:14:10.520 | Well, LDL cholesterol can penetrate the endothelium.

03:14:15.960 | We know this.

03:14:17.020 | So there gets to be this debate about small oxidized

03:14:19.980 | versus large fluffy.

03:14:21.680 | Both can penetrate the endothelium.

03:14:23.660 | Even large LDL can penetrate the endothelium.

03:14:26.620 | Now, small oxidized penetrates more easily,

03:14:30.180 | but it carries less total cholesterol

03:14:32.500 | and deposits less cholesterol in the endothelium.

03:14:35.300 | Large doesn't penetrate as easily,

03:14:38.740 | but per unit of LDL cholesterol,

03:14:43.100 | it's depositing more cholesterol because it's bigger.

03:14:46.220 | The net effect is both are equally atherogenic.

03:14:49.900 | In the end.

03:14:51.140 | So we have the mechanism, right?

03:14:53.660 | Now let's look at the epidemiology.

03:14:55.460 | Well, the epidemiology tends to support it as well.

03:14:57.780 | And then if we look at the really what,

03:15:00.940 | for me, changed my mind,

03:15:02.380 | because I used to be somebody who was on the side of,

03:15:04.460 | "Ah, LDL doesn't really matter.

03:15:06.180 | It's HDL to LDL ratio."

03:15:07.820 | And was when I saw the Mendelian randomization studies,

03:15:12.300 | which for those who aren't familiar,

03:15:14.420 | you're basically looking at natural polymorphisms

03:15:19.420 | on genes that cause differences in secretion of LDL, right?

03:15:23.900 | And since LDL is a lifetime exposure risk,

03:15:29.820 | meaning if you're doing a two-year randomized control trial,

03:15:34.200 | looking at LDL levels,

03:15:35.700 | it says nothing about what they ate before.

03:15:39.000 | And in that timeframe,

03:15:41.460 | what's the likelihood people are gonna have heart attacks

03:15:43.700 | or some sort of myocardial infarction?

03:15:45.580 | It's pretty low.

03:15:47.420 | Now that we have all these data banks of blood samples

03:15:51.220 | and whatnot from people from all these old studies,

03:15:53.140 | they go back and do these analyses.

03:15:54.940 | And when they look at LDL cholesterol and plot it,

03:15:59.140 | so lifetime exposure to LDL cholesterol,

03:16:01.440 | and plot it against the risk of heart disease,

03:16:04.660 | I mean, you can pretty much draw a straight line through it.

03:16:07.280 | And so to me, that's pretty strong evidence.

03:16:11.480 | If you wanna apply the same logic of,

03:16:13.540 | well, we have this,

03:16:15.000 | and LDL, by the way, can cause inflammation

03:16:18.040 | in the endothelium.

03:16:19.240 | So you have that damage to it

03:16:20.840 | because of the apolipoprotein,

03:16:23.160 | that attracts inflammatory markers.

03:16:24.960 | So people are getting some of this cart before the horse.

03:16:28.000 | And then the other thing that sealed it for me

03:16:29.280 | was again, like HDL.

03:16:31.120 | They looked at the same thing at HDL.

03:16:33.360 | Turns out HDL is just kind of a marker of metabolic health.

03:16:35.800 | It's good to have high HDL,

03:16:36.920 | but HDL itself doesn't appear to be protective

03:16:40.440 | because if they raise it with drugs

03:16:42.480 | or look at people who secrete more or less,

03:16:45.360 | it doesn't seem to independently modulate

03:16:47.640 | risk of cardiovascular disease.

03:16:48.880 | So all that to say,

03:16:51.480 | saturated fat is really only an issue,

03:16:55.640 | I would say, for the LDL,

03:16:58.720 | the fact that it can raise LDL.

03:17:00.280 | And there is some evidence

03:17:03.760 | it's not necessarily good for the gut microbiome

03:17:05.820 | because the bile salt in products

03:17:08.320 | from emulsifying saturated fat,

03:17:10.360 | 'cause it requires more bile,

03:17:11.960 | that those might be toxic

03:17:13.280 | to some beneficial species of bacteria.

03:17:16.040 | But here's what I'm not saying.

03:17:16.880 | I'm not saying don't eat any saturated fat.

03:17:19.240 | What I'm saying is, again,

03:17:20.680 | your overall diet quality is what matters.

03:17:23.260 | I think it's fine to have some saturated fat.

03:17:26.680 | I think probably try to keep below

03:17:28.800 | seven to 10% of your daily calorie intake.

03:17:31.700 | What also matters is there's no solutions, only trade-offs.

03:17:34.040 | And so if somebody says to me,

03:17:36.420 | I was able to lose 50 pounds on low carb

03:17:40.480 | and everything got better, but my LDL went up a little bit.

03:17:43.480 | And they felt like that was the only thing

03:17:46.800 | they were able to be consistent with,

03:17:47.960 | I'd say on balance, they're probably better off

03:17:51.440 | with that slightly elevated LDL

03:17:53.800 | than they would be if they kept the 50 pounds on.

03:17:56.700 | Now, I would argue if they had lost the 50 pounds

03:18:00.600 | and lowered their LDL,

03:18:02.660 | their overall risk would be lower than it is now.

03:18:05.600 | But again, we have to look at

03:18:06.760 | what can somebody consistently execute.

03:18:08.320 | So all that to say,

03:18:10.120 | I'm not saying you should consume seed oils.

03:18:12.360 | I'm not saying that there's no negative downsides,

03:18:14.400 | but if we look at comparing it

03:18:16.320 | to a comparable molecule of saturated fat,

03:18:18.760 | there's a much more compelling argument

03:18:20.500 | that saturated fat is bad for you versus seed oils.

03:18:23.440 | - Thank you for that very thorough and very clear answer.

03:18:27.700 | And I just will highlight that you ate a steak last night.

03:18:31.920 | So you were by no means anti-meat or saturated fat.

03:18:35.000 | - I ate a steak right in front of a vegan.

03:18:36.520 | - Okay, not to aggravate them,

03:18:39.720 | just because they stuck to their principles,

03:18:42.100 | you stuck to yours.

03:18:42.940 | - I was originally going to order fish and they said,

03:18:44.280 | "It's okay if you want to get a steak."

03:18:45.440 | And I said, "Okay, if you say so."

03:18:47.380 | Now they did make a couple of comments in jest

03:18:50.520 | during the meal.

03:18:51.840 | - Fair enough, fair enough.

03:18:53.760 | Let's talk about artificial sweeteners.

03:18:56.440 | - Sweet.

03:18:57.280 | Those are the other people that pay me.

03:19:00.720 | - That's right.

03:19:01.840 | He's kidding, folks.

03:19:02.720 | Good goodness.

03:19:03.800 | - Yeah, I got to be careful about that.

03:19:06.480 | You and I got into a, it wasn't a scrap.

03:19:09.320 | We got into a little disagreement about this years ago.

03:19:12.360 | So long ago that it's probably not even worth mentioning

03:19:14.560 | that, you know, I was somewhat enticed

03:19:17.160 | by the data from Dana Small's laboratory,

03:19:19.080 | then at Yale, I think now she's up at McGill,

03:19:21.880 | looking at some kind of Pavlovian conditioning

03:19:24.480 | of artificial sweeteners.

03:19:25.760 | So basically children in that case consuming a high amount

03:19:33.960 | of, I think it was either sucralose or saccharin

03:19:37.640 | in combination with a meal, kind of standard meal,

03:19:42.040 | and look at the insulin response.

03:19:44.440 | And then removing the food component sometime later.

03:19:48.200 | And what they essentially observed

03:19:50.220 | was a conditioned insulin response.

03:19:52.840 | So then you then have these kids just have

03:19:55.600 | the sweet tasting non-caloric drink minus the food.

03:20:00.600 | And they then saw an elevated insulin response.

03:20:03.640 | In other words, the same way that Pavlov got dogs

03:20:05.820 | to salivate in response to a bell that was paired with food,

03:20:08.800 | then you remove the food and then they just simply salivate

03:20:11.320 | in response to the bell.

03:20:12.240 | The idea was, well, maybe you can create

03:20:15.120 | a conditioned Pavlovian like response

03:20:17.400 | to artificial sweeteners.

03:20:18.600 | Okay, I thought it was kind of a cool study.

03:20:20.620 | Looking back, I probably wouldn't have covered it

03:20:23.160 | the way I did because it's not a typical scenario.

03:20:26.620 | I think the more important questions are,

03:20:30.000 | is there any evidence that artificial and low calorie

03:20:34.400 | or zero calorie sweeteners like Stevia,

03:20:36.560 | we have to be very careful here.

03:20:37.960 | - No. - Not all artificial.

03:20:39.400 | - That they are somehow dangerous

03:20:42.200 | in any of the following ways.

03:20:43.440 | One, do they alone increase insulin

03:20:47.840 | to levels that are problematic?

03:20:50.060 | Two, do they stimulate appetite

03:20:53.640 | in a way that's problematic, independent of insulin,

03:20:56.260 | or maybe as a consequence of insulin?

03:20:58.560 | And then three, what's the story with their potential effect

03:21:01.480 | on the gut microbiome?

03:21:02.760 | I think those are the three categories that come to mind.

03:21:04.560 | There are probably other categories.

03:21:05.600 | And I just want to say for the record, then and now,

03:21:08.240 | I'll consume some aspartame every once in a while

03:21:11.200 | in the form of a Diet Coke.

03:21:12.240 | Stevia seems to be in a lot of the things that I consume

03:21:14.460 | and I don't have a problem with that.

03:21:16.520 | So I'm not anti artificial or low calorie sweetener.

03:21:20.000 | Although for reasons that are entirely personal

03:21:23.200 | and have no scientific basis whatsoever,

03:21:25.280 | I avoid things with sucralose in them.

03:21:27.800 | I don't really like the taste of it

03:21:29.200 | and I have kind of an aversion to it

03:21:31.480 | for uninteresting reasons.

03:21:32.740 | - And that's a great way to couch that of,

03:21:36.320 | I don't have data for this.

03:21:37.840 | Personally, I don't do it.

03:21:38.840 | - Yeah, if I see something, I'm like, yeah, no.

03:21:40.600 | Aspartame, fine.

03:21:41.520 | Stevia gets the thumbs up by me.

03:21:43.480 | And I will choose low calorie or zero calorie sodas

03:21:48.680 | or drinks or energy drinks

03:21:50.200 | when I have the option to have something with sugar.

03:21:54.160 | It's just kind of, but I'm not anti sugar either.

03:21:56.520 | I just developed this as a habit.

03:21:58.880 | Yeah, I prefer to get my calories from food.

03:22:01.400 | - Yeah, you'd prefer to have a steak

03:22:03.240 | as opposed to having the cola.

03:22:05.880 | - Right, steak, strawberries, blueberries, oatmeal, rice,

03:22:08.820 | butter, olive oil, and all the other delicious,

03:22:11.000 | wonderful things, as opposed to a Coke.

03:22:13.200 | I'd rather just have a diet Coke and eat a bit more steak.

03:22:15.520 | - So let's take the insulin thing first.

03:22:18.320 | So interesting mechanism that they're showing there.

03:22:20.920 | What I would say is there's been a couple of meta-analyses

03:22:24.680 | now looking at different non-nutritive sweeteners

03:22:27.600 | and their effects on insulin, and they don't show an effect.

03:22:30.080 | So there's no real effect in it.

03:22:33.440 | Let's just kind of play it out logically a little bit.

03:22:36.660 | If there was a significant effect on insulin,

03:22:38.840 | one of two things is gonna happen.

03:22:41.040 | You're gonna see a drop in blood sugar

03:22:42.440 | 'cause you're not eating anything, right?

03:22:43.960 | So most of us, if we drink a diet soda,

03:22:48.260 | we don't then go hypoglycemic, right?

03:22:51.920 | Or if there is an increase in insulin,

03:22:54.300 | if blood glucose isn't dropping,

03:22:57.880 | then there must be a corresponding increase in glucagon,

03:23:00.760 | which is basically offsetting all of insulin's issues.

03:23:03.120 | I don't think either of those things happen.

03:23:04.400 | I think it's inert, and the research,

03:23:07.500 | the meta-analyses tend to show this.

03:23:09.800 | There was a, I'm thinking of two meta-analyses

03:23:12.360 | where they looked at these, they looked at glycemia,

03:23:14.480 | they looked at insulin sensitivity,

03:23:16.240 | and they looked at insulin release,

03:23:17.160 | and they just didn't see any effect.

03:23:19.920 | Now, when it comes to, what was the second point?

03:23:24.120 | - So we have insulin, we have does it stimulate appetite

03:23:27.520 | in ways that may or may not be related to insulin?

03:23:30.280 | You ruled out insulin increase.

03:23:31.720 | So like, could there be a pairing of like,

03:23:34.820 | okay, every time I eat, I have a diet soda.

03:23:38.080 | Then if I have a diet soda on its own,

03:23:40.240 | does it stimulate the desire to eat,

03:23:42.360 | a la the Dana Small study?

03:23:44.120 | And by the way, that study was halted.

03:23:46.720 | This is the problem with that study

03:23:48.080 | is it was being done in kids.

03:23:49.640 | The increases in insulin that they saw

03:23:51.600 | in a subset of the kids were so dramatic.

03:23:54.040 | This is the way she described it in a talk,

03:23:55.560 | so I feel comfortable saying this.

03:23:56.880 | Maybe she's changed her tune,

03:23:57.860 | but in this online talk, an academic talk,

03:24:00.160 | the increases in insulin were so dramatic

03:24:03.120 | that they were concerned about the kids

03:24:04.960 | becoming pre-diabetic, so they halted the study,

03:24:06.920 | which means the totality of the data never came in,

03:24:09.760 | means that it's hard to draw a conclusion.

03:24:12.600 | - Okay, when we talk about studies,

03:24:14.100 | we're always talking about means and averages, right?

03:24:16.280 | I leave open the idea that there could be

03:24:18.680 | subsets of populations,

03:24:20.320 | that there could be individual responses.

03:24:22.000 | I leave all that open.

03:24:24.120 | So on average, if that's true,

03:24:28.040 | and there is a conditioned response,

03:24:31.280 | we're worried about, well, one,

03:24:34.280 | is there an effect on appetite,

03:24:35.520 | where people are gonna eat more,

03:24:36.920 | even if those things don't have calories,

03:24:38.400 | they're not gonna make you fat,

03:24:39.240 | there's no insulin release.

03:24:40.360 | Okay, they're stimulating you to eat more.

03:24:42.820 | Well, if we look at the randomized control trials

03:24:46.200 | where they tell people, hey, instead of regular cola,

03:24:48.680 | drink diet cola.

03:24:50.540 | If that was true, an actual outcome,

03:24:53.460 | we would see people on diet soda

03:24:55.560 | either not lose weight or gain weight,

03:24:58.000 | definitely compared to water,

03:24:59.960 | and probably similar compared to a regular cola,

03:25:02.780 | maybe a little bit less,

03:25:03.620 | but we would expect to see weight gain.

03:25:05.400 | We actually see the exact opposite thing.

03:25:06.880 | So we have several randomized control trials now

03:25:09.860 | where people comparing not just diet soda,

03:25:15.620 | I don't wanna just say diet soda,

03:25:16.620 | a lot of them are low, no calorie beverages

03:25:18.920 | is kind of what they talk about,

03:25:20.680 | 'cause not everything's technically diet soda,

03:25:22.880 | but I think people know diet drinks in particular.

03:25:26.360 | Where they're comparing them,

03:25:29.160 | they tell people either have cola,

03:25:32.720 | either have diet soda, or sorry, diet drink,

03:25:37.400 | or just use water.

03:25:38.900 | Now, they absolutely, every single one of these trials,

03:25:44.560 | they lose weight going to diet drinks,

03:25:48.180 | usually a pretty significant amount of weight.

03:25:49.700 | - Yeah, and usually, as I recall,

03:25:51.300 | pretty significant amount of diet drink,

03:25:54.380 | like two liters a day even,

03:25:55.820 | like the person will carry around a liter

03:25:57.340 | or a two liter of diet drink

03:25:59.580 | and sip on it whenever they get thirsty or hungry.

03:26:02.060 | - Yep. - Yeah.

03:26:03.060 | - So then what's been interesting

03:26:05.380 | is they've done direct comparisons to water,

03:26:08.600 | and some studies don't really show a difference,

03:26:10.960 | but several studies and several meta-analyses now

03:26:13.620 | have shown that when people,

03:26:16.460 | if they have either them use water in place of regular soda

03:26:20.560 | or diet drinks in place of regular soda,

03:26:22.700 | the people actually lose a little bit more weight,

03:26:24.660 | and it's statistically significant with the diet drinks.

03:26:27.460 | Now, I don't think diet drinks are fat burners, okay?

03:26:32.060 | They're not causing you

03:26:33.000 | to have increased energy expenditure,

03:26:35.220 | but if you are somebody who is used to a sweet taste,

03:26:39.900 | if you switch to water,

03:26:42.620 | perhaps you're seeking out that sweetness elsewhere,

03:26:45.300 | and so maybe those people are consuming

03:26:46.700 | a little bit more sweet food or whatnot,

03:26:49.060 | whereas in the diet drink group,

03:26:51.180 | maybe that's filled that sweet taste for them.

03:26:53.540 | So I don't get into the,

03:26:55.700 | again, this gets,

03:26:56.540 | like people get very like ethically charged

03:26:58.180 | about what's wrong with drinking water.

03:26:59.660 | There's nothing wrong with drinking water.

03:27:01.100 | If you can drink water, you feel satiated,

03:27:03.380 | and you maintain your body.

03:27:04.300 | - I'm just chuckling 'cause if drinking water

03:27:06.020 | becomes an issue online, then I might quit.

03:27:08.820 | - No, no, it already has, it already has.

03:27:09.660 | - All right, well, I'm not quitting,

03:27:10.680 | but that's ridiculous.

03:27:12.420 | - Yeah, well, so again, perhaps that mechanism exists,

03:27:17.300 | but at least on average,

03:27:19.340 | it's obviously washed out by the fact that

03:27:23.300 | for whatever reason, for most people who do this,

03:27:27.220 | they get a little bit more satiety

03:27:30.880 | out of consuming a diet beverage

03:27:33.700 | as opposed to substituting water for a beverage.

03:27:35.760 | Now, again, if you're somebody who you can drink water

03:27:39.100 | and you don't have an inclination for diet drinks,

03:27:41.140 | then don't do it.

03:27:42.300 | You don't need it.

03:27:43.980 | But again, I look at it as we need to lower the barriers

03:27:48.980 | for people to start getting healthy.

03:27:52.140 | And unfortunately, a lot of people with the message

03:27:55.400 | of just drink water, and they'll say,

03:27:58.220 | well, diet soda's just bad for you as regular soda,

03:28:01.380 | or it's worse for you than regular soda.

03:28:03.380 | Their intention might be, I just want people to drink water.

03:28:07.980 | But the outcome is people go,

03:28:09.820 | well, I can't imagine getting my soda,

03:28:11.260 | so I'm just gonna drink regular soda then, right?

03:28:14.020 | And so while your intention was positive,

03:28:16.900 | the outcome is actually kind of disastrous, right?

03:28:19.780 | And so we have to disconnect what the intentions

03:28:21.780 | of the message are from what it actually produces.

03:28:24.820 | And so that's why I say, hey, if we're moving levers,

03:28:28.040 | if somebody is obese and they came to me

03:28:30.740 | and they're like, well, I drink five colas a day,

03:28:33.820 | I'm like, fantastic,

03:28:35.740 | because I'm thinking five diet sodas instead,

03:28:39.140 | and now we have just saved 750 calories,

03:28:41.980 | and you're gonna start losing weight just by doing that,

03:28:44.620 | right, which again, people say,

03:28:46.660 | well, what about 100 years down the road or whatever?

03:28:49.340 | I'm like, well, most of these sweeteners

03:28:51.660 | have been around for decades now.

03:28:53.480 | We do have quite a bit of data on them.

03:28:55.860 | But let's say that there is something we don't want.

03:28:57.500 | Again, I'm shooting the alligator closest to the boat,

03:28:59.660 | right, like we know what obesity does.

03:29:01.620 | So, and people who do these diet drinks lose weight,

03:29:05.300 | they get more metabolically healthy.

03:29:06.460 | So again, if it comes down to soda or diet soda,

03:29:11.460 | by all means, let's do the diet soda.

03:29:15.160 | And if there's some small negative effects to it,

03:29:17.960 | we'll deal with them.

03:29:19.080 | So that brings me to the gut microbiome.

03:29:21.200 | Most of the research studies in humans

03:29:24.400 | where they use reasonable doses

03:29:26.360 | don't really show much effect on the gut microbiome.

03:29:28.260 | However, there are a few with particular sweeteners

03:29:31.420 | like sucralose that do show an effect.

03:29:33.760 | Now, there was one that got a lot of play

03:29:35.400 | and you and I actually talked about this.

03:29:36.720 | I think we actually talked on the phone about this.

03:29:39.260 | And it was an interesting study.

03:29:41.000 | I thought it was well done,

03:29:42.120 | but I want to be careful about how overgeneralized it was.

03:29:46.200 | So the first part is in this study,

03:29:49.440 | they selected for people who basically,

03:29:52.920 | they did a very, very like intense selection process

03:29:55.780 | where I think there was over 1500 people

03:29:58.660 | who were like originally included in the study

03:30:01.840 | and they whittled them down to like a hundred something.

03:30:04.800 | Because they wanted people

03:30:06.960 | who had really hardly ever used

03:30:09.920 | artificial sweeteners in their life.

03:30:12.080 | And that's a pretty small percentage of the population.

03:30:14.520 | What they found was a lot of people submitted saying,

03:30:17.120 | I don't use them, I've never used them.

03:30:18.760 | And then when they did dietary recall logs,

03:30:20.520 | like, oh, well, actually you're using it here

03:30:22.120 | and you're using it here.

03:30:22.960 | So they selected all these people out.

03:30:24.800 | And they found that when they gave them sucralose,

03:30:30.640 | that the composition of their gut microbiome changed

03:30:33.020 | and they called it dysbiosis.

03:30:34.280 | I'll come back to that

03:30:35.400 | 'cause that's a scary sounding word.

03:30:37.200 | First off, what's interesting is,

03:30:41.020 | if you're somebody,

03:30:44.520 | that population that they're selecting,

03:30:46.920 | those are probably people

03:30:47.920 | who have been specifically trying to avoid them.

03:30:50.100 | Because if you're not,

03:30:51.140 | even if you don't try to consume them, they're everywhere.

03:30:55.320 | So if you haven't been consuming them,

03:30:57.480 | it's likely that you're specifically trying to avoid them,

03:30:59.800 | which probably means that you have negative thoughts

03:31:02.480 | and beliefs around artificial sweeteners.

03:31:05.640 | And again, we've discussed the power of belief before.

03:31:07.880 | I'm not saying it was a bad study because of that.

03:31:10.160 | I'm just saying we have to be careful

03:31:11.480 | about how much we over-interpret this research data.

03:31:15.440 | - Are you saying that the potential

03:31:17.920 | that those subjects had to believe

03:31:21.240 | that zero calorie sweeteners or low calorie sweeteners

03:31:25.160 | could be bad for their microbiome

03:31:26.400 | might've actually made their gut microbiome more dysbiotic?

03:31:30.080 | - Maybe.

03:31:30.920 | I mean, again, we've talked about

03:31:32.200 | the power of belief is very powerful.

03:31:33.400 | Now, I have no way to support that, right?

03:31:36.720 | I'm just saying, be careful before we over-generalize.

03:31:39.400 | Plus it was a two week study and-

03:31:41.520 | - Just two weeks?

03:31:42.560 | - Yes, it was two weeks.

03:31:43.760 | Now again, two weeks is enough time

03:31:47.720 | to show differences in the gut microbiome.

03:31:49.240 | Actually, a few days is typically enough time.

03:31:51.280 | - And only for sucralose.

03:31:52.440 | So Stevia, no change.

03:31:54.560 | - There was another sweetener that I think had a change.

03:31:57.720 | It might've been saccharin.

03:31:58.880 | - Saccharin and sucralose are the ones

03:32:00.480 | that seem to always show the biggest effects, quote unquote.

03:32:04.400 | And I don't know how often those are used

03:32:07.200 | in diet drinks these days.

03:32:09.680 | I mean, less and less.

03:32:10.600 | I mean, it's usually aspartame, Stevia,

03:32:12.680 | more in the kind of wellness, health, fitness crowd drinks.

03:32:16.640 | - Sucralose is pretty ubiquitous

03:32:18.160 | in a lot of diet products and whatnot.

03:32:19.680 | But like being frank, my whey protein powder

03:32:24.480 | with outward nutrition is sweetened with sucralose.

03:32:26.400 | I mean, it's a great sweetener.

03:32:29.000 | And so some people will take that as well.

03:32:30.560 | Of course, he's gonna defend sucralose

03:32:31.960 | 'cause it's in his protein.

03:32:32.800 | But if I thought it was really bad,

03:32:34.440 | I would just use a different sweetener.

03:32:36.480 | So what I will say as well is gut dysbiosis sounds bad,

03:32:41.480 | but it simply means that the gut microbiome changed.

03:32:45.060 | And I have several friends who are gut microbiome experts.

03:32:50.000 | And they'll, when we sit down and talk about this stuff,

03:32:52.060 | they're like, I mean, their takeaway is,

03:32:54.560 | yeah, in like 50 years,

03:32:55.720 | we'll probably have a really good idea of this stuff.

03:32:57.840 | But right now, we just know that certain things change it.

03:33:00.840 | We don't really know like if it's a good change, bad change.

03:33:05.300 | So I'll give an example.

03:33:07.380 | There was another study that did show

03:33:09.760 | a gut microbiome shift with sucralose.

03:33:12.160 | And they showed some of the species of bacteria

03:33:14.360 | that were increased or decreased.

03:33:16.360 | And one of the species that was increased,

03:33:18.360 | I believe, I'm gonna butcher this so badly.

03:33:21.200 | I think it was Blaudia coccoides was the name of it,

03:33:25.320 | or at least how I tried to read it, right?

03:33:27.320 | 'Cause these are very like strange Latin words.

03:33:29.640 | - Yeah, the names of bacteria

03:33:31.240 | are really difficult to pronounce.

03:33:34.120 | - Now, what's interesting is this species of bacteria

03:33:38.960 | was associated with better metabolic health,

03:33:41.560 | lower risk of obesity, better insulin sensitivity.

03:33:46.280 | And so I kind of walked away saying,

03:33:50.080 | well, couldn't you make the argument

03:33:51.560 | that sucralose actually changed the gut microbiome

03:33:53.840 | for the better based on some of this data?

03:33:56.160 | And so I'm not saying that.

03:33:59.080 | What I'm saying is the following.

03:34:01.380 | We don't really know if that change to the gut microbiome

03:34:05.840 | is a good change, bad change, or neutral.

03:34:08.720 | We just know that it changes.

03:34:10.940 | So if you want to avoid, fine.

03:34:13.960 | But if you're somebody who really struggles

03:34:17.560 | with moderating your intake and a sucralose is,

03:34:21.440 | or an aspartame or whatever have you,

03:34:24.600 | helps you moderate that intake,

03:34:27.000 | then again, you're shooting the alligator

03:34:28.280 | closest to the boat.

03:34:29.720 | Let's focus on the big stuff, right?

03:34:32.040 | And that's kind of where I land.

03:34:34.480 | And again, I hold open that perhaps my mind

03:34:38.640 | will change and adjust.

03:34:41.720 | But sucralose has been around a long time.

03:34:44.400 | The other thing people bring up is cancer.

03:34:46.160 | They'll bring up cancer with artificial sweeteners.

03:34:48.920 | I'll give you an example why I'm not worried about this.

03:34:52.080 | First off, you have to keep in mind

03:34:54.640 | that negativity bias in the news, all right?

03:34:57.220 | Things that are negative are much more likely

03:35:01.000 | to get play than things that are positive, okay?

03:35:03.520 | Think about how much you hear about this causes cancer,

03:35:06.720 | this causes heart diseases,

03:35:08.120 | versus this protects against this,

03:35:09.800 | this protects against this.

03:35:11.160 | - It's also safer to when the media warns people off things

03:35:15.040 | as opposed to towards things,

03:35:16.400 | because if they push people towards things,

03:35:18.960 | there's more liability.

03:35:20.360 | - Right.

03:35:21.200 | - Away from things,

03:35:22.200 | rarely are they responsible for the opportunity cost there

03:35:25.960 | or the trade-off as you referred to it.

03:35:28.120 | - Right, so you hear a lot,

03:35:32.760 | people are like, oh man,

03:35:33.600 | all these studies say that these cause cancer.

03:35:35.360 | So again, I'm gonna give a shout out to Consensus,

03:35:38.240 | 'cause it's a great AI tool that basically will give you,

03:35:41.320 | like if you ask it a question,

03:35:43.140 | and there's some filters that help with that,

03:35:45.360 | it will give you kind of like,

03:35:47.100 | this percentage of studies say yes,

03:35:48.500 | this percentage say possibly,

03:35:49.740 | and this percentage say no.

03:35:51.180 | - I've used it a little bit.

03:35:52.220 | - Yeah. - It's a great tool.

03:35:53.380 | - And if you type in, does aspartame cause cancer,

03:35:56.140 | for example, 80% say no.

03:35:59.620 | And then like, I think the split is like 13% say possibly

03:36:02.860 | and 7% say yes, right?

03:36:03.900 | But you would never know that

03:36:04.780 | from like listening to social media, watching the news.

03:36:08.340 | But I wanna point out one study in particular

03:36:10.680 | that did show an association of aspartame intake with cancer.

03:36:14.540 | And it was from the Nutrisanti cohort,

03:36:16.260 | I think that was out of France,

03:36:17.420 | like 100,000 people.

03:36:19.100 | And they looked at like people who didn't use it

03:36:22.740 | versus people who were like low-moderate users

03:36:25.020 | and then people who were like high users,

03:36:26.400 | they categorized them to tertiles.

03:36:28.800 | And between the non-users and the low-moderate users,

03:36:33.800 | there was like a,

03:36:36.020 | I believe it was like a 15-ish percent

03:36:38.960 | relative risk increase in cancer incidents.

03:36:41.940 | And that's what got reported in the news.

03:36:45.880 | And then that dropped to like a 6% increase risk

03:36:50.220 | in the high group.

03:36:51.380 | So it did this,

03:36:54.420 | which I'm not aware of any carcinogens

03:36:57.220 | that they actually decrease in terms of the risks,

03:37:02.220 | like carcinogenesis as they go up in like the concentration.

03:37:08.020 | And so to me, you know,

03:37:11.580 | one of the things you've got to realize,

03:37:12.980 | my PhD advisor used to say,

03:37:14.780 | "If you torture the data enough,

03:37:16.420 | it will confess what you want it to say."

03:37:18.960 | And so if you go through a large group of people

03:37:23.960 | and you start trying to associate things with other things,

03:37:27.200 | you'll find things,

03:37:28.140 | but you gotta be very careful

03:37:29.020 | with how strongly you interpret it.

03:37:30.780 | And so for me, again, if I'm feeling strongly about,

03:37:33.620 | for me to feel strong about something,

03:37:35.460 | there has to be some kind of dose response

03:37:37.500 | or at least like if there's a bell curve,

03:37:40.060 | sometimes you see that.

03:37:41.780 | But, you know, very rarely, especially with cancer stuff,

03:37:46.500 | usually this is kind of a linear effect.

03:37:49.020 | And so again, that's where I land right now

03:37:51.340 | on artificial sweeteners.

03:37:52.280 | I land on them as a useful tool for a lot of people.

03:37:56.100 | I don't think they're magic.

03:37:57.220 | I think they occupy that sweet taste for a lot of people.

03:37:59.900 | And if you can completely avoid them and abstain from them

03:38:02.420 | and you're perfectly happy, then by all means do that.

03:38:05.660 | But if they help you maintain a healthy body weight,

03:38:08.360 | then by all means do that.

03:38:10.620 | - Love it.

03:38:12.180 | You've dealt with some injuries.

03:38:13.260 | You've dealt with pain.

03:38:14.100 | You talked a little bit about how reducing your stress

03:38:17.740 | and interpretation of the pain could help.

03:38:19.740 | I wanna talk about pain and pain management,

03:38:21.980 | but before we do that,

03:38:23.020 | a more general question that relates

03:38:26.020 | is about recovery tools.

03:38:27.880 | Many, many people want to know,

03:38:30.140 | okay, if we were to create the pyramid of the hierarchy

03:38:34.460 | of tools for recovery after training,

03:38:36.800 | and here let's change out

03:38:38.820 | or let's use resistance training

03:38:40.900 | and cardiovascular training interchangeably.

03:38:43.080 | Some people run hard, other people lift hard or do both.

03:38:46.180 | From the moment that session ends,

03:38:49.460 | what do you have in your kit of things to maximize recovery

03:38:53.800 | over the shortest possible amount of time?

03:38:56.400 | And I can immediately think of sleep as critical,

03:39:00.500 | but what are the things that you can do

03:39:02.220 | starting from that final repetition?

03:39:05.720 | - So I think it's not so time-dependent.

03:39:08.140 | Like I said, it's more about what you do

03:39:09.260 | over the course of 24 hours

03:39:10.900 | and on your day-to-day lifestyle.

03:39:12.620 | But sleep, as you said, also your nutrition,

03:39:17.220 | so being consistent with your nutrition.

03:39:18.740 | And you don't have to get in ultra-fast digesting,

03:39:21.860 | carbohydrate, and 50 grams of weight isolate

03:39:26.260 | right after you eat.

03:39:27.940 | But it's probably a good idea within a couple hours

03:39:30.100 | of finishing your workout

03:39:31.380 | that you have a meal with high-quality protein

03:39:34.660 | and that you're just eating an overall healthy diet

03:39:37.260 | throughout the course of a day.

03:39:38.220 | And we've kind of discussed that at length.

03:39:41.540 | - You could do it immediately after your workout.

03:39:43.540 | - You can, yeah, you can, absolutely.

03:39:45.900 | - Quick, I'm going to layer in an additional question.

03:39:48.180 | Is there any evidence that fruit is not good

03:39:52.340 | at replenishing glycogen as compared to starch?

03:39:55.780 | Because the reason I ask this is that,

03:39:58.420 | like if I finish a workout and I have some,

03:40:00.620 | like a whey protein shake with a bunch of berries in it

03:40:02.660 | and a couple of bananas, assuming equal calories,

03:40:05.580 | is that going to replenish glycogen the same way

03:40:08.180 | as if I have a couple of scoops of whey protein

03:40:10.140 | and a bowl of oatmeal or rice?

03:40:12.020 | - This is going to circle back to our mechanism

03:40:13.780 | versus outcome.

03:40:14.820 | And this is one where I changed my mind

03:40:17.980 | because of seeing outcomes.

03:40:19.640 | So the reason this comes up is fructose,

03:40:25.640 | your muscles and other tissues lack the enzyme

03:40:31.440 | to turn fructose into muscle glycogen.

03:40:34.660 | Your liver has that enzyme.

03:40:36.740 | So your liver can take fructose

03:40:38.140 | and turn it into liver glycogen.

03:40:40.300 | So that has led some people in sports science

03:40:44.500 | or research to say, well, don't have fructose

03:40:47.860 | after a workout.

03:40:48.700 | And actually fructose is kind of a dead carbohydrate, right?

03:40:51.260 | 'Cause it's not going to replenish muscle glycogen.

03:40:53.560 | And then I was reading a study from Tracy and Josh Anthony,

03:40:58.020 | which were, they came out of Lehman's lab

03:41:00.180 | and they actually are responsible for really flushing out

03:41:02.740 | a lot of the mTOR pathway,

03:41:04.900 | a lot of that translation initiation pathway.

03:41:07.460 | Very, very brilliant people.

03:41:09.740 | And I was glad I got to see them a few weeks ago

03:41:11.620 | when my advisor got his award.

03:41:13.120 | Tracy personally taught me how to Western blot.

03:41:16.140 | So thank you, Tracy.

03:41:17.900 | They did a study where they looked at glycogen replenishment

03:41:20.380 | after exercise, giving either sucrose,

03:41:23.380 | which is 50% glucose, 50% fructose or pure glucose.

03:41:27.680 | And actually, if I recall correctly,

03:41:31.380 | they actually got a little bit better muscle glycogen

03:41:33.500 | replenishment with sucrose.

03:41:35.780 | Now this, how do you explain it?

03:41:38.860 | That seems completely counterintuitive.

03:41:40.980 | And there, I believe,

03:41:43.940 | again, it's been some time since I read this paper,

03:41:45.540 | but I believe the explanation was

03:41:47.900 | by providing some fructose,

03:41:50.260 | what you're doing is you're kind of satiating

03:41:53.020 | the liver's need for glucose.

03:41:55.380 | And so that glucose that does come in from sucrose

03:41:58.460 | can then kind of just bypass the liver

03:42:00.620 | and be available for muscle.

03:42:02.540 | Whereas if you're getting pure glucose,

03:42:04.840 | the liver is gonna start picking things off.

03:42:07.520 | Now it wasn't, if I recall correctly,

03:42:09.020 | it wasn't a big difference

03:42:09.900 | in the rate of glycogen replenishment.

03:42:11.260 | But the other thing is people don't realize,

03:42:14.060 | well, even though fructose can't be used

03:42:17.220 | to replenish muscle glycogen directly,

03:42:20.060 | you forget about how the body operates

03:42:22.500 | in terms of whole body metabolism.

03:42:25.260 | And you can store fructose as glucose, glycogen,

03:42:29.540 | in the liver, and then the liver can release that glycogen

03:42:32.740 | at some point into the bloodstream,

03:42:34.380 | and then that can be taken up by the muscle

03:42:37.180 | and turned into muscle glycogen.

03:42:39.020 | So again, what it really boils down to

03:42:40.740 | is what are you doing on a 24-hour basis?

03:42:42.740 | And what I will say too is

03:42:44.920 | the rate of glycogen replenishment

03:42:46.900 | gets really tossed around a lot

03:42:49.220 | as something really important.

03:42:50.720 | For the most part, the rate isn't so important

03:42:54.460 | if you're eating enough total carbohydrate

03:42:55.880 | on a total daily basis and enough calories,

03:42:58.220 | you'll replenish your muscle glycogen.

03:43:00.580 | And most of these people, I always say,

03:43:02.680 | dude, you're weight training for an hour.

03:43:05.100 | You're gonna do it again in 23 hours.

03:43:08.100 | You got plenty of time to replenish that glycogen.

03:43:10.140 | You don't need cyclic dextrin or dextrose or whatever.

03:43:13.980 | And so I'm not really worried about that.

03:43:16.220 | I think where the rate of glycogen replenishment

03:43:18.180 | really matters is when you're dealing with athletes

03:43:20.140 | who have multiple events in a day, right?

03:43:22.980 | Where it is, they're gonna perform

03:43:26.220 | and then they need to replenish quickly

03:43:28.820 | before they go to the next event.

03:43:30.580 | Or people obviously doing endurance exercise

03:43:34.300 | where like Ironman's, triathlons and that sort of thing

03:43:36.900 | where getting in that replenishment

03:43:41.900 | and keeping it going is very important.

03:43:44.500 | But I think for the average person

03:43:45.860 | who's just exercising once a day, not really a big deal.

03:43:48.980 | Just make sure you're eating enough total carbohydrates.

03:43:50.740 | So for you, the berries and the fruits

03:43:53.680 | and the whey protein afterwards, excellent.

03:43:57.040 | - Okay, and then perhaps, and then typically I'll do a meal

03:43:59.260 | that includes some starch a little bit later in the day.

03:44:01.620 | - Yeah. - Great.

03:44:02.700 | So nutrition post-workout or in the hour or two post-workout

03:44:07.700 | making sure you eat enough in the following hours.

03:44:11.460 | Do you include any kind of stress down regulation?

03:44:14.860 | Are you, do you do anything else besides nutrition

03:44:17.900 | and sleep to accelerate recovery?

03:44:20.220 | - So stress management, like you said.

03:44:21.660 | So I am blessed enough that I currently live

03:44:26.660 | and home on Tampa Bay and I get to watch the sunset

03:44:29.660 | over the water every night.

03:44:30.820 | And that might say, that might seem like a weird thing

03:44:35.400 | but I really feel like that has helped with my stress level.

03:44:38.100 | - Viewing horizons, we know,

03:44:40.020 | just puts you into panoramic vision.

03:44:41.540 | We know this from stuff my lab has done.

03:44:43.100 | - This is right in your wheelhouse right here.

03:44:44.300 | - Oh yeah, panoramic vision is a, will, you know,

03:44:47.700 | come off the accelerator of the sympathetic arm

03:44:51.260 | of the autonomic nervous system,

03:44:52.620 | which is just nerd speak to say,

03:44:53.980 | enjoy those sunrises and sunsets.

03:44:55.700 | They are very calm.

03:44:56.540 | - I was talking to a friend of mine, we're sitting out.

03:44:58.660 | I said, well, you know,

03:44:59.900 | Andrew would approve of the sunset viewing.

03:45:02.420 | He might not approve of the bourbon I'm having with it, but.

03:45:04.900 | - You don't need my approval anyway.

03:45:06.380 | - So whatever, could you just slow down a little bit,

03:45:09.100 | you know, and just decompress and feel better.

03:45:12.340 | And so, I mean, another thing I'll do is I'll, you know,

03:45:14.540 | once the, if I had the kids, once I go to bed,

03:45:16.140 | I'll go downstairs and I'll lay on the couch with my cat

03:45:18.500 | and I'll play a video game, you know, just relax.

03:45:21.380 | - Yeah, decompress.

03:45:22.220 | - Just decompress, you know.

03:45:23.140 | - Things you enjoy.

03:45:24.260 | - Yeah, I think things you enjoy, like, obviously like,

03:45:27.260 | you can't drink a 12 pack of beer

03:45:28.540 | and have that be conducive to that sort of thing.

03:45:31.420 | But the other thing I will say is I think a lot of people

03:45:34.220 | focus too much, especially with resistance training,

03:45:39.220 | there's some evidence that being just overall

03:45:43.580 | active lifestyle, like going out,

03:45:46.140 | I remember when I was first getting into lifting,

03:45:47.900 | like back in the early 2000s, the guy's like,

03:45:49.540 | I go in and I lift and then I lay down the rest of the day.

03:45:51.740 | Right, 'cause I gotta recover, right?

03:45:54.060 | I think the research actually suggests

03:45:56.380 | that you're better off like having kind of

03:45:57.620 | an overall active lifestyle, you know, that,

03:46:00.220 | yeah, it's important to rest and recover,

03:46:01.840 | but it's probably important to move your body

03:46:03.640 | throughout the day.

03:46:04.500 | You know, active recovery does have some good data on it.

03:46:08.280 | - Awesome.

03:46:09.120 | Earlier, we were talking about protein.

03:46:12.120 | Actually, several times we talked about protein

03:46:13.780 | and I neglected to ask a question that is very timely

03:46:16.620 | because I just did an episode,

03:46:18.360 | a solo episode of this podcast recently

03:46:20.180 | about skin health and appearance.

03:46:22.340 | And I looked at the data on ingesting collagen.

03:46:26.020 | Could be from bone broth or other sources of collagen.

03:46:28.780 | Typically it's powdered collagens,

03:46:30.580 | anywhere from five to 30 grams of collagen.

03:46:33.460 | And I was kind of surprised at the results.

03:46:36.340 | I also talked to some dermatologists.

03:46:38.280 | Basically the results say in these papers,

03:46:40.740 | these meta, the meta analysis I looked at,

03:46:43.880 | and in speaking with these dermatologists

03:46:45.740 | that the conclusion was that regular consumption

03:46:49.640 | of collagen on the order of anywhere

03:46:51.300 | from five to 30 grams per day,

03:46:53.020 | with a little bit of vitamin C,

03:46:54.380 | a couple hundred milligrams of vitamin C

03:46:55.900 | for whatever pathway related reason,

03:46:59.020 | seemed to improve skin appearance.

03:47:02.340 | Fewer wrinkles, reduction in wrinkles,

03:47:04.060 | more skin tautness, appearance of moisture, et cetera.

03:47:06.900 | These are subjective measures, right?

03:47:08.540 | I don't think they were calibrating the skin

03:47:10.180 | and looking at tensile strength and things like that.

03:47:11.980 | But people felt they looked younger, et cetera.

03:47:15.660 | And I was surprised, really surprised,

03:47:18.980 | because without making this too long a question or story,

03:47:22.740 | a few years back, there were some claims

03:47:24.420 | by not-to-be-named individuals on Instagram saying,

03:47:27.660 | "Well, if you want to improve the function of your liver,

03:47:29.500 | "eat liver.

03:47:30.340 | "If you want to improve the function of your heart,

03:47:31.340 | "eat heart."

03:47:32.180 | If you want, and you and I were just like, "No."

03:47:35.020 | You're the nutrition biochemistry guy.

03:47:36.780 | I'm the neuroscience guy.

03:47:38.420 | I have a little bit of a background in cold physiology

03:47:40.920 | that I rarely talk about, but in any case.

03:47:43.380 | - But you know physiology.

03:47:44.220 | - Yeah, I mean, there is, we both agree,

03:47:46.500 | there's like zero evidence that ingesting a protein,

03:47:49.460 | which of course is broken down

03:47:50.840 | into its amino acid constituents in the gut,

03:47:53.700 | would somehow lead to selective shuttling

03:47:56.340 | of those amino acids from liver that you ingest

03:47:59.020 | to your liver.

03:47:59.840 | That just is like a, there's only one word for that.

03:48:01.740 | It's like a crazy unsubstantiated claim.

03:48:04.620 | And then some papers were sent my way,

03:48:06.420 | which were in a different language.

03:48:07.820 | And like, I was trying to, anyway,

03:48:09.680 | zero minus one evidence, as I would say.

03:48:12.700 | And yet the whole notion that consuming collagen protein,

03:48:16.220 | which Dr. Gabrielle Lyon told me

03:48:17.860 | is actually a pretty low quality protein

03:48:20.020 | on the kind of protein quality scale.

03:48:22.300 | It's like tendon and toenails and all this stuff, gross,

03:48:24.900 | but yeah, that's what it is.

03:48:26.300 | Somehow leads to improvements in actual collagen,

03:48:30.380 | which is of course is a native protein of the body.

03:48:33.740 | So I went digging.

03:48:34.560 | I just want to, before I get your answer,

03:48:37.000 | I went digging and I found, again,

03:48:38.940 | a not to be named individual has this kind of wild story

03:48:41.420 | on the internet that, ah, well, this is because

03:48:44.580 | it's broken down into the dipeptides and tripeptides

03:48:48.260 | in the gut that somehow inform the body

03:48:51.700 | that there's an injury in the collagen.

03:48:53.420 | And we have quote unquote, breakdown of collagen,

03:48:56.140 | AKA injury, I don't know,

03:48:57.360 | breakdown of collagen and elastin in the skin all the time.

03:49:00.000 | And then the body recognizes the presence

03:49:02.820 | of those dipeptides and tripeptides.

03:49:04.620 | So little groups of twos or three peptides, not just one,

03:49:08.080 | and sends those selectively to the skin.

03:49:10.760 | And so it's like, once again, it's like,

03:49:12.400 | it makes sense as a mechanism if it were true,

03:49:15.400 | but I just had to like roll my eyes.

03:49:18.320 | I was like, oh no.

03:49:19.160 | Okay, I'm going to pitch this over to Lane,

03:49:20.880 | as I am right now.

03:49:21.720 | So Lane, take it away.

03:49:23.200 | What's the story?

03:49:24.080 | Does ingesting collagen improve skin appearance?

03:49:26.920 | And does it, do we have any idea

03:49:28.840 | what the mechanism might be?

03:49:30.120 | - Okay.

03:49:30.940 | - So I have a long question folks,

03:49:32.440 | but I had to set the stage.

03:49:33.640 | Well, first off, I will never make somebody apologize

03:49:36.280 | for giving a long winded preamble, right?

03:49:39.040 | Because you know how long I'm about to go.

03:49:40.680 | - We're both scientists.

03:49:42.400 | - So I will tell you, I actually,

03:49:46.040 | like after I commented on that post,

03:49:48.640 | I went and looked up some more research

03:49:49.980 | and I've actually changed my mind a little bit.

03:49:51.840 | Okay, which probably wouldn't surprise you.

03:49:53.960 | I haven't completely changed my mind,

03:49:55.180 | but I've shifted a little bit.

03:49:56.680 | So first off, my first thought

03:49:59.200 | was exactly what your thought was.

03:50:00.920 | This is all getting broken down

03:50:02.560 | to constitutive amino acids.

03:50:03.720 | It's not like you're taking collagen

03:50:04.880 | and just like putting it in the place you want it.

03:50:06.560 | Like just, you know, like that sort of thing.

03:50:09.380 | So my skepticism was also

03:50:15.240 | because one of the highest quality

03:50:18.260 | protein metabolism labs out there,

03:50:19.900 | where Jordan Tromblin is, is Luke Van Loon.

03:50:22.320 | Luke Van Loon's lab is one of the best

03:50:23.920 | protein metabolism labs in the world.

03:50:28.680 | And they were publishing research

03:50:29.720 | back when I was in graduate school.

03:50:31.080 | In fact, I think Jordan and I

03:50:32.080 | were actually in graduate school at the same time.

03:50:34.440 | So they did a study where they looked at

03:50:38.200 | after exercise, giving either whey protein

03:50:43.060 | or collagen protein.

03:50:44.080 | And they looked at skeletal muscle protein synthesis

03:50:45.880 | and they looked at connective tissue protein synthesis.

03:50:48.280 | Right?

03:50:49.120 | And they saw no difference between whey protein

03:50:52.880 | and collagen protein in connective tissue synthesis

03:50:55.520 | after exercise.

03:50:56.740 | And so, but by the way,

03:50:59.640 | collagen did not stimulate muscle protein synthesis,

03:51:01.720 | even at like 25 grams, I think it was.

03:51:03.560 | Which most protein sources,

03:51:05.280 | even like plant protein sources,

03:51:07.100 | will stimulate muscle protein synthesis at like 25 grams.

03:51:09.800 | - So it's very low quality.

03:51:10.920 | - So it's low quality in terms of skeletal muscle.

03:51:12.580 | Anybody who's telling you like,

03:51:14.240 | "Collagen's good for building muscle."

03:51:16.600 | I mean, it's better than no amino acids,

03:51:18.340 | but it's one of the worst you can get

03:51:20.120 | in terms of all protein sources.

03:51:22.300 | So that study, again, since I know this lab,

03:51:29.400 | I have a lot of trust of the data

03:51:30.940 | that comes out of there.

03:51:31.920 | Right?

03:51:32.760 | And it was a well-designed studies, well-executed study.

03:51:35.000 | But then there's these meta-analysis out there,

03:51:38.320 | looking at skin, looking at, you know,

03:51:41.080 | even like some we're trying to make associations

03:51:43.680 | with connective tissue injuries and whatnot.

03:51:46.720 | And again, I'm always a little bit,

03:51:50.840 | have the heebie-jeebies when we jump straight to,

03:51:53.480 | we have an outcome,

03:51:54.880 | but we don't know what the mechanism is.

03:51:56.440 | Right?

03:51:57.480 | And then I started reading a review

03:52:01.000 | by Luke Van Loon, actually.

03:52:03.160 | And it was talking about like the,

03:52:06.080 | so the collagen is three alpha helixes.

03:52:11.080 | So if you think about DNA, right?

03:52:14.480 | It's a double helix, right?

03:52:15.960 | So think about three helixes.

03:52:17.600 | And an alpha helix just refers

03:52:19.260 | to the way a protein is shaped.

03:52:21.320 | And they are,

03:52:26.360 | they have a very large amount of glycine.

03:52:29.040 | So glycine is an non-essential amino acid.

03:52:31.280 | And every third residue in collagen,

03:52:35.320 | in the three alpha helixes,

03:52:36.920 | every third residue is a glycine molecule.

03:52:40.560 | So 33% of collagen is glycine.

03:52:43.860 | And then I want to say 10% is proline.

03:52:49.440 | And then another like 10% ish is hydroxyproline.

03:52:53.360 | So proline that's had a hydroxyl molecule added to it.

03:52:56.120 | And that's done, apparently the hydro,

03:52:58.840 | nobody needs to know this, but just for fun stuff,

03:53:01.240 | the hydroxyproline helps stabilize the structure

03:53:04.640 | because of the hydrogen bonding with hydroxyl molecules,

03:53:07.200 | which I found interesting.

03:53:08.560 | So you have these three amino acids

03:53:13.440 | and amino acid derivatives

03:53:14.600 | that make up over half the amino acids

03:53:17.120 | in the collagen protein.

03:53:20.440 | And, well, my next thing was,

03:53:23.280 | well, a lot of non-essential amino acids,

03:53:25.600 | if you give them in the diet,

03:53:26.720 | they don't really raise non-essential amino acids

03:53:28.800 | in the plasma because the gut, liver,

03:53:30.800 | extract a bunch of them.

03:53:32.660 | Glycine is different.

03:53:33.680 | If you give,

03:53:34.520 | there was a study looking at giving just one gram

03:53:36.480 | of pure glycine and looking at the rise in plasma glycine.

03:53:40.960 | And I think it went up,

03:53:42.360 | like I think the like native level of glycine in the plasma,

03:53:47.020 | something like 250 micromolar.

03:53:49.600 | And after giving a gram of it,

03:53:52.120 | it went up to like 400 micromolar.

03:53:54.000 | I'm giving my best estimate based on the graph I saw.

03:53:57.240 | And so then I got thinking,

03:54:00.080 | okay, that's, I guess,

03:54:03.760 | possible if you have more glycine and proline.

03:54:07.440 | I didn't look, I didn't see the proline data,

03:54:09.840 | but if you have more glycine and proline

03:54:12.000 | that's winding up in the plasma,

03:54:13.840 | not that they're being directed to those tissues,

03:54:18.120 | but since those tissues use so much of that amino acid,

03:54:22.620 | perhaps it does help.

03:54:24.480 | And then if you look at like whey protein versus collagen

03:54:28.940 | and the content of glycine and proline,

03:54:32.160 | I think collagen has like three to 10 times

03:54:36.960 | the amount of glycine and proline in it

03:54:38.700 | compared to whey protein.

03:54:40.720 | So am I ready to say collagen helps skin

03:54:45.620 | and connective tissue and whatnot?

03:54:47.200 | I'm not, 'cause I'm still, you know,

03:54:48.760 | this study looking at connective tissue synthesis

03:54:51.440 | doesn't show anything.

03:54:52.280 | So the mechanism is incomplete,

03:54:53.840 | but there is a plausible,

03:54:58.920 | at least they've shown that glycine can go up in the plasma

03:55:03.960 | from taking it in.

03:55:05.320 | And it is a big component of collagen.

03:55:09.000 | - So why aren't we just suggesting

03:55:10.760 | that people take glycine instead of collagen?

03:55:13.640 | - Well, I think what they would say is like,

03:55:15.640 | there's, because you're getting hydroxyproline

03:55:18.360 | in the collagen that you're taking,

03:55:20.560 | that probably, I don't know how much hydroxyproline

03:55:22.760 | is typically in the diet, you know?

03:55:24.520 | But I would say, again, I am a little bit nervous

03:55:30.120 | about like a lot of these subjective measurements

03:55:32.240 | of skin appearance and skin tightness.

03:55:34.360 | I mean, I'm not saying faking data.

03:55:37.260 | I'm just saying that data is easy to get wrong

03:55:40.680 | because it is subjective, right?

03:55:42.320 | It's less, the more subjective things are,

03:55:45.640 | the more bias you introduce.

03:55:47.720 | So I hold open the idea that supplemental collagen

03:55:51.280 | could help with skin, hair, nails.

03:55:55.560 | I'm not convinced by the data,

03:55:56.920 | and I'm not going to tell people

03:55:57.840 | to spend their money on it just yet,

03:55:59.560 | but I'm going to stop short of saying that I think it's BS.

03:56:02.920 | And I've actually changed my tune slightly on that

03:56:06.440 | from looking in this data a little bit further.

03:56:09.120 | - Thank you for that very thorough answer

03:56:10.960 | and very clear answer.

03:56:12.240 | If nothing else, it tells us that collagen protein

03:56:16.880 | is going to be least ideal for post-workout protein

03:56:21.880 | because of the fact that it's, you know,

03:56:24.400 | it lacks significant amounts of leucine, et cetera.

03:56:28.080 | So it might be good for skin.

03:56:31.440 | Definitely not a great protein for dietary protein reasons.

03:56:34.840 | - No, it's very, very low in the branch amino acids,

03:56:37.480 | like the lowest in leucine of any protein source

03:56:40.120 | I'm aware of.

03:56:40.960 | I think it's like 2% leucine, which is like most,

03:56:44.280 | even like the worst plant-based sources of leucine

03:56:48.640 | are like 6.5% leucine.

03:56:50.400 | So like the worst sources of protein in the diet

03:56:53.400 | are still like three times more leucine

03:56:54.920 | than you get in collagen protein, so.

03:56:56.640 | - And a quality whey protein

03:56:57.800 | would be the highest leucine available.

03:56:58.640 | - Oh, it'd be 11, 12, 13%, yeah.

03:57:01.520 | - Eggs, whey protein.

03:57:03.160 | - Eggs are going to be around 9% leucine.

03:57:06.160 | You know, beef, chicken,

03:57:07.240 | most your animal sources are around 8%,

03:57:09.960 | and then most of your plant sources are 8% and under.

03:57:13.100 | - Great, well, Dr. Lane Norton,

03:57:17.060 | thank you for coming back here

03:57:20.040 | for the second time on the podcast.

03:57:21.720 | I must say it's a true pleasure to sit down with you

03:57:25.760 | and discuss training, nutrition, supplementation,

03:57:29.880 | recovery, pain management, stress, life advice,

03:57:33.540 | and for so many reasons.

03:57:37.640 | A, you're, you know, a serious scientist, you know,

03:57:41.920 | in our business of science, that really means something.

03:57:46.100 | You're serious about the science

03:57:47.620 | and you're a lighthearted guy in the right context,

03:57:50.680 | but you're a serious scientist.

03:57:52.240 | You believe in the process and you provide the nuance,

03:57:56.020 | even though that might not be convenient

03:57:58.540 | to what somebody wants or convenient to the discussion.

03:58:02.140 | - By the way, not convenient for me either.

03:58:04.420 | I'd rather this stuff be so simple, you know?

03:58:06.300 | - Right, sure, sure, you're like the rest of us.

03:58:09.260 | And at the same time, I really appreciate it

03:58:12.020 | because we are now also colleagues

03:58:14.840 | in the public health, public facing landscape,

03:58:19.080 | social media it's sometimes called,

03:58:20.420 | but a lot of landscapes, podcasts, YouTube, et cetera.

03:58:23.880 | And it's required, it's needed that people like you exist.

03:58:28.880 | And I will go so far to say that, you know,

03:58:31.920 | and I'm not alone in this, right?

03:58:33.200 | Because I've talked about this with Rogan

03:58:35.640 | and with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, excuse me,

03:58:38.980 | and others, you know, in an ocean of noise,

03:58:42.900 | some of which has validity, right?

03:58:47.120 | But in an ocean of noise about nutrition and training

03:58:50.160 | and all these different things and how to,

03:58:52.720 | evidence-based blank and science-based that,

03:58:55.680 | you really clearly are pure signal.

03:59:00.080 | Like you're going to take as much time

03:59:02.080 | and as much effort to communicate the real signal.

03:59:05.020 | And you today have really defined for us,

03:59:07.360 | for you what is real versus not real versus a maybe.

03:59:12.180 | And I just want people to hear that loud and clear

03:59:14.580 | because I think sometimes people pay attention

03:59:17.820 | to how spirited you are and they miss the fact

03:59:20.500 | that in that spirited nature and in the nuance

03:59:24.900 | and in the, look, we're both long-winded at times.

03:59:27.860 | Like I know, because I know this for myself,

03:59:30.420 | but I certainly know it for you that,

03:59:31.940 | that comes from a place of respect for the science

03:59:35.220 | and respect for your audience.

03:59:37.240 | That is not being dismissive.

03:59:38.880 | That's actually respect for them.

03:59:40.200 | It would be disrespectful to just give them

03:59:42.300 | the answer they want or give them a quick answer

03:59:44.020 | without the explanation.

03:59:45.660 | So I just really want to extend like a real voice

03:59:48.940 | of gratitude for you, for what you did for us today,

03:59:51.700 | just far too much to list off.

03:59:53.740 | It's all so valuable, just so, so valuable.

03:59:56.540 | And also what you do on social media and the way you do it.

03:59:59.660 | And look, I also really love and respect

04:00:01.620 | your fighting spirit because you're fighting,

04:00:04.060 | you're fighting for truth, you're fighting for good.

04:00:06.340 | And I also love the posts and the pictures of your kids.

04:00:08.900 | They're delightful.

04:00:09.900 | And it's great to see that the balance

04:00:11.500 | in your life you've created.

04:00:12.580 | So I could go on and on, but I'm going to cut this short

04:00:15.060 | by just saying a giant thank you for being the signal

04:00:18.540 | among all the noise.

04:00:21.140 | - Well, speak for yourself of being long-winded

04:00:23.820 | 'cause I'm not, but honestly, I appreciate that.

04:00:27.800 | That means a lot to me.

04:00:29.640 | You know, I recognize how valuable your platform is

04:00:34.400 | and how many people want to be on it.

04:00:35.800 | And the fact that I've been asked to come on again,

04:00:38.660 | I really appreciate it.

04:00:39.900 | And to be able to have the opportunity

04:00:41.940 | to disseminate this information

04:00:44.140 | and not just talk about the studies,

04:00:45.900 | but talk about, hey, here's a method of thinking.

04:00:49.020 | Here's a way to approach this stuff.

04:00:51.660 | And I mean, you kind of pointed out like,

04:00:54.060 | I would love to be able to say, yeah, seed oils are bad.

04:00:56.620 | Like, I'd love to give you that answer, but I can't do it.

04:00:59.780 | I can't make myself do it because I look at the evidence.

04:01:03.800 | And I'm glad you said spirited.

04:01:06.260 | I do feel like I do have some fighting spirit,

04:01:08.760 | but at the end of the day, I tell people,

04:01:13.760 | you know, I'm human.

04:01:15.740 | I've got my own biases, my own beliefs,

04:01:18.780 | and I like making money like anybody.

04:01:20.420 | But I, and I like to be right.

04:01:23.500 | But at the end of the day, I want to help.

04:01:27.000 | And I believe that if I continue to execute on that mission,

04:01:33.060 | that, you know, financial stuff will take care of itself.

04:01:35.400 | And at the end of the day,

04:01:36.320 | I just want to be a net positive on the world.

04:01:41.060 | So thank you for giving me that chance.

04:01:42.900 | - It's been a true pleasure,

04:01:45.120 | and you're absolutely more than net positive on the world.

04:01:49.240 | And we'll just have to have you come back

04:01:51.080 | and talk to us again before long.

04:01:53.300 | Thank you so much.

04:01:55.040 | - Anytime, thank you.

04:01:56.400 | - Thank you for joining me

04:01:57.240 | for today's discussion with Dr. Lane Norton.

04:01:59.840 | To learn more about his work,

04:02:01.080 | please see the links in our show note captions.

04:02:03.600 | If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

04:02:06.080 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

04:02:08.120 | That's a terrific zero cost way to support us.

04:02:10.520 | In addition, please be sure to follow the podcast

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04:02:18.460 | Please also check out the sponsors mentioned

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04:02:22.700 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

04:02:25.160 | If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast,

04:02:28.160 | or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider

04:02:30.200 | for the Huberman Lab Podcast,

04:02:31.760 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

04:02:34.240 | I do read all the comments.

04:02:36.120 | For those of you that haven't heard,

04:02:37.280 | I have a new book coming out.

04:02:38.460 | It's my very first book.

04:02:40.080 | It's entitled "Protocols,

04:02:41.480 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

04:02:43.640 | This is a book that I've been working on

04:02:44.800 | for more than five years,

04:02:45.960 | and that's based on more than 30 years

04:02:48.280 | of research and experience.

04:02:49.840 | And it covers protocols for everything from sleep,

04:02:52.900 | to exercise, to stress control,

04:02:55.400 | protocols related to focus and motivation.

04:02:57.880 | And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation

04:03:01.200 | for the protocols that are included.

04:03:03.280 | The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com.

04:03:07.160 | There you can find links to various vendors.

04:03:09.560 | You can pick the one that you like best.

04:03:11.320 | Again, the book is called "Protocols,

04:03:13.080 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

04:03:15.720 | If you're not already following me on social media,

04:03:18.040 | I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

04:03:20.960 | So that's Instagram, Twitter, now known as X,

04:03:23.820 | Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

04:03:25.780 | And on all those platforms,

04:03:27.260 | I discuss science and science-related tools,

04:03:29.580 | some of which overlap with the contents

04:03:31.100 | of the Huberman Lab podcast,

04:03:32.340 | but much of which is distinct from the contents

04:03:34.400 | of the Huberman Lab podcast.

04:03:36.020 | Again, that's Huberman Lab on all social media platforms.

04:03:39.760 | If you haven't already subscribed

04:03:40.980 | to our Neural Network Newsletter,

04:03:42.620 | our Neural Network Newsletter

04:03:44.060 | is a zero cost monthly newsletter

04:03:46.160 | that includes what we call protocols,

04:03:47.740 | which are brief one to three page PDFs

04:03:50.180 | that cover things such as neuroplasticity and learning,

04:03:53.220 | dopamine optimization, how to get better sleep,

04:03:56.300 | things like deliberate cold exposure.

04:03:57.980 | We have a foundational fitness protocol.

04:04:00.120 | We have a protocol all about habit forming and much more.

04:04:04.020 | To sign up, again, at completely zero cost,

04:04:06.500 | you simply go to HubermanLab.com,

04:04:08.660 | go to the menu function in the corner,

04:04:10.680 | scroll down to newsletter, and you provide your email.

04:04:13.380 | I should point out that we do not share

04:04:15.020 | your email with anybody.

04:04:16.740 | Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

04:04:18.840 | with Dr. Lane Norton.

04:04:20.260 | And last, but certainly not least,

04:04:22.520 | thank you for your interest in science.

04:04:24.680 | (upbeat music)

04:04:27.260 | (upbeat music)

Dr. Layne Norton: Tools for Nutrition & Fitness

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