How Much Protein Do You Really Need for Strength, Hormones & Longevity? | Be Well Moments

32:55So when I hear that, I'm like, it's a caveat. Yes, we know there's no upper limit for men, but it was a very small in, and we don't know what the training status was. We have to look at the age. There's so many different factors that come into digestion that I'm still holding on to. Look, we know that you need regular protein throughout the day at around 30 or 40 grams at each meal, maybe 15 to 20 grams each snack. And if you're exercising, you know, as a recreational athlete on the days that you're not training three meals and one snack is probably enough. And if you, on the days that you are training, you want to bookend your training with some food before and after.

33:34And that's the simplest way that I can get people to visualize what they're supposed to be doing with regards to how they space protein out. When we're looking at low carb, high protein, this is a big problem because now women are focusing more and more on that palm size or palm size and a half. And they're forgetting that you don't have to have that, that size of salmon or meat on the plate. you can have something that's like a bootable, right? And you're having some sweet potato, you're having some tempeh, you're having some beans, you're having slice of beef in there. You're having lots of dark green leafy veggies and some fruit.

34:10So you're having lots of complex carbs. And then you're also having your protein because there's so many different sources of protein. And I'm also, yeah, don't forget the quinoa. Don't forget the amaranth or the buckwheat. All of those can be accents. I try to steer people more towards the visualization of like a Japanese plate where the major things of Western society are actually the accents and the things that are accents for the Western society, like our veggies and things is the main course. So it's like, okay, let's, let's bring them together. So you know, that when you are having protein, I don't mean a big slab of fish.

34:45I mean, fish is in there and it's part of the accent with all the other good things that contribute to protein. And when I start saying that and people are like, oh, I get it now. I get it. So I can have a salad at lunch that is some fruit and some spinach and some beans, and maybe I'm going to have a little bit of roasted chicken. So I'm getting all these great things and I feel satiated, but I don't feel overly full from too much dead protein hanging out my stomach. And then we have the people who are like, what about the carnivorous diet? I'm like, that completely wrecks your gut microbiome.

35:23Like I don't understand why people would just want to do something that's so contraindicative to having a healthy gut. Wow. I love that this is going to probably go a bit AWOL on YouTube with that comment, but I agree. We had Dr. Will Balsowich who comes on talking a lot about obviously fiber fuel and the importance of fiber for the gut. And I think that is really important, right? I think looking at now, I'm already building out. I want to make sure that I'm keeping track of this. a perfect woman's day, which isn't always perfect. I'm going to reframe that. How a day should be looking for a woman who has no health conditions, going to put it out there, isn't excessively an athlete, not excessive endurance training, but basically wakes up, has some water, I imagine, has either 15 grams of protein for breakfast, minimum if they're not hungry, but if not, they have a very good 30 30 30 rule 30 grams of well 30 grams 30 fat 30 carbohydrate 30 protein and that's how we want to be building our plate and we want to be having at least 1.6 grams of protein for one kilo of body weight and we want to be spacing that constantly throughout the day and we want to make sure that it's whole grains we want to make sure that it's a variety of foods a variety of proteins it's not just a slab of one we're really mixing it in for the diversity that's how I'm garnering women's health on a plate or as a lifestyle right now am I right perfect you are and then on the subsides we have to have room for like whiskey and dark chocolate and coffee and wine as the you know the occasional accidents that makes life so fun I'm interrupting for one moment to ask one small favor please subscribe to the show this helps it grow more than you know and I'm so bad at asking this from you I'm so bad of thinking about this but you know my goal is a hundred thousand to get to on YouTube and I really want to bring you more content and better guests and bigger episodes and we can only do that with your help together so please do hit subscribe thank you in the UK and I think it's really similar in the US actually I did look at and I did look at the intakes in the US but it's recommended for around 56 grams a day for men and 45 grams a day for women of protein care that is what the British Dietetic Association talk about when we look at protein intakes yours is very different and you talk about it really well in the book and you go into how much protein was she having and you recommend around 30 to 50 grams of high quality protein that's also a really important kind of term just to reference their high quality protein we're going to go into that a bit more so people might be shocked they might also be on board already with this information but talk to me about your philosophy on why it's 30 to 50 grams per mil primary so let's just say three mils a day when we talk about protein we have to talk about what can we say that is evidence-based and that has some outcome of meaning if you were to think about nitrogen balance studies.

38:36They were trying to figure out the minimum amount of protein and the cheapest way to feed these soldiers, these 18-year-old males, to mitigate the amount of protein, to optimize for carbohydrates because it's cheap. And that's where they came up with the minimum amount of dietary protein necessary to prevent deficiencies. To me, nitrogen balance is not an outcome. The idea that someone would say, okay, well, this is the minimum to prevent deficiencies based on a nitrogen balance. I don't know where anything in medicine is based on a nitrogen balance. You're asking, why am I talking about that?

39:11Because it puts into perspective this whole conversation about how are you getting 30 to 50 grams, this amount of protein seems like it's a lot, etc., etc., etc. Nitrogen balance is not a health outcome that we use or recognize versus muscle protein synthesis, which is a health outcome over time. It is muscle protein synthesis, is the incorporation of amino acids into skeletal muscle that over time is believed to help prevent and protect against sarcopenia, to help manage lean body mass and skeletal muscle health. That, for me, is the outcome that I'm looking for. Therefore, 30 to 50 grams of dietary protein is what in the literature has been shown, especially if someone is older, more mature, over the age of 30, that will create that stimulus.

40:04And that is what I would base skeletal muscle health on. And that is where I base the recommendations, the way in which the recommendations come from. 30 to 50 grams at the first meal is probably the most important. And that's where we have all of the data because a first meal effect is much easier than later on looking at other meals. When an individual is coming out of an overnight fast, the body is primed to have an action, right? And that action would be the operation in this muscle protein synthesis. An individual needs between 30, needs a minimum of 30 grams to create that physiological process.

40:42And that is based on Lucy, which is one of the essential amino acids that skeletal muscle is exquisitely sensitive to. When you hit that, you set up your metabolism appropriately for the whole day. When you hit the 30 to 50 grams? Yes. And this is a bold statement. When you hit the 30 to 50 grams, what happens is, and especially if carbohydrates are controlled, you stimulate muscle protein synthesis and these initiation factors. You are in essence stimulating what would be considered a biomarker for muscle health. That process could go on for two to five hours, making that stimulation, getting that right, is the most critical.

41:19Because we don't really know how important that second meal is. We can argue that the last meal before bed is also important because you're going into an overnight fast. But what we can argue is that that first meal is critical. And when you nail protein, again, we talk about protein as if it's one thing, but protein is 20 different amino acids, all with unique biological roles. It doesn't have one. They are not interchangeable. There are the nine essentials, which are the ones that you must eat for. And when it relates to skeletal muscle health, you do need that stimulation of this leucine. That comes from high quality proteins.

41:53It is most abundant as all essential amino acids. That would be, say, whey protein, eggs, beef, chicken, turkey, fish, dairy products, Greek yogurt. If an individual is more plant-based, they are going to require, depending on what kind of plant products they're utilizing, they are going to require anywhere from 25 to 35 percent more of total protein to meet that leucine threshold. Yeah, you've got a whole book, not a whole thing. You've got like a little box in your book saying that vegetarians consume approximately 65 grams of plant-based protein a day. And you're saying, but this amount is far too low.

42:32And I know, and there's two things, gosh, there's so much you say. And I'm like, I don't want to interrupt you, but I've got so much to ask you around this stuff. And I think there's two folds. I really want to touch upon this vegetarian diet quickly, because I do know that we speak a lot around plant-based diets on the show as well. We had Dr. Will Boltziewicz on recently talking about gut health and fiber and how that relates and so there's a lot of different information that we kind of bring onto the show on you know have more fiber, have more beans, have more plant-based foods to consume for your gut microbiome.

43:02We had Dr. Felice Jaccaron talking about food and mood and obviously the connection there via the vagus nerve and how it's really important to have more plant-based foods in your diet. So there's two things I really want to touch upon that and I really want to talk about the intermittent fasting because you just mentioned there Lucy which I found really interesting. So let's just start there on if people are listening to this and going okay protein and she's just listed lots of animal products there and then getting a little bit worried about obviously hearing a lot about the importance of gut health and fiber.

43:31What would you say to those listeners who are listening now who are also maybe advocating plant-based? So my question would be why is it mutually exclusive? Why would it be all or nothing? Both are critical and not interchangeable. I absolutely agree with every statement that you've said about dietary fiber and how important it is to get beans. Beans are a great source of fiber. These are not what I would consider protein sources. They have amino acids, but these are not complete proteins. These are not an ideal protein source. And certainly with plant sources of proteins comes a lot of carbs and you have to balance it.

44:08I think that we need to have conversations that are inclusive of both because again both are critical and not interchangeable the idea that you would have an optimal protein diet and somehow that would mean that you wouldn't have fiber would not be the way that i would think about it and i also think that we have to consider we need both 40 of women over the age of 65 are not meeting the baseline recommendations of protein and they're the ones who actually really need it right and arguably they're probably not getting enough fiber either. But when it comes to hierarchy, what is the hierarchy of health and wellness?

44:45And the hierarchy of health and wellness for me would be muscle health first. If you eat for muscle health, everything else falls into place. And what does that include? That includes high quality proteins. Could you be vegetarian and get enough protein? Totally. The idea, again, protein is only one macronutrient. There are other things that ride along with dietary protein like creatine and carnitine and anserine and zinc and a whole host of bioavailable vitamins and minerals. That being said, when you eat for muscle health, you also do really well or an individual, if they are exercising, will also do well with carbohydrates, which would be foods that help with a gut microbiome.

45:29So could you lay out a really good breakfast? Because obviously this is what you've mentioned is like one of the key things for people when they're thinking about how they're starting their day is having a really good rich protein breakfast. Now one of our top protein foods in the UK is cereals and that terrified me when I read that statement and so this is what's really interesting. Okay so you're talking about starting breakfast with good protein sources but the majority of the UK probably start their breakfast with some sugary cereal and toast. so let's try and define what is a healthy protein breakfast to start off with a great healthy protein breakfast is one that you're going to do so just so you know breakfast is the most important meal and there's a few things that you have to have for breakfast you have to have protein and you have to have pressure pressure pressure yeah you need protein and pressure that is the breakfast of champions dietary protein sources uh whey protein would be great have a scoop of whey protein a scoop and a half of whey protein, have a little Greek yogurt in there, have some berries, have a half a cup of berries, have a cup of berries, depending on what your carbohydrate threshold is.

46:36I think that's a great breakfast. If you want a little bit of fat, go ahead, throw five grams of fat in there. Don't overcomplicate it. You could hit a one-to-one ratio of carbohydrates to protein. So if it were me and I was going to make breakfast, I'll tell you what I had for breakfast this morning. I had two Greek yogurt packs, low in sugar, had some berries in it, and I'm good. Super easy. And it's quick. 30 grams of protein, had probably 20 grams of carbs, maybe 30 grams of carbs, a little bit of fat that came in the yogurt, and I'm good to go.

47:10I thought we'd start off on something that's really topical. We talk about quite a lot recently on the show and it's had a lot of interest and it's around protein and plant-based protein versus meat-based protein and especially when it comes to which we haven't delved into too much strength and performance so there's kind of that overarching old star opinion that you've got to eat a ton of meat to gain good quality muscle and skeletal health now can you talk to me a little bit about plant-based protein in regards to strength and performance and how should we be looking at it? Do we need more than if we're not having meat?

47:51And kind of what's the context of this currently? Yeah, this is a topic that I've kind of dug into at great depths with a number of different researchers from, you know, Christopher Gardner and Balta Longo and Don Lehman. These will be names that people might uh be familiar with um there's a there's a few things recently right so you've had chris on he's he's a delight to speak to a really fun guy so i think there's a few things that we need to kind of break down here to make this really simple for for the listeners one of the things that's often said is that plant proteins are are incomplete and we need everyone to understand what the definition of incomplete is because that's often conflated with plants missing an essential amino acid as in they're just not there and just to kind of define essential amino acid that is a building block of protein that your body cannot make some amino acids that our body uses to make protein we can make they're non-essential and then the essential ones we have to get through our diet so there's this idea out there that certain plants like types of legumes like black beans or whole grains that the protein in those is incomplete and people conflate that with okay it's missing an essential amino acid it's actually one of the nine essential amino acids or more is not there that's actually inaccurate it's a myth all plants contain all nine essential amino acids okay i'll repeat that mike draw plants every single plant contains all nine essential amino acids that's where they come from right animals also don't produce these themselves they have to get it from somewhere so these are these amino acids originate in plant form and all plants have all nine what is true is that in certain plants if you look at the amount of these amino acids if you were to eat just that food so let's take let's take uh grains as an example here if you were to just eat grains for all of your calories so let's say someone's eating 2 000 calories a day gosh you'd be bored and and i say okay you're only going to eat brown rice now you're going to fall into a little bit of trouble here because you'll fall short of your daily requirement for one of those essential amino acids which is lysine okay so it's not that lysine is not in in grains it's just that if you were to eat all of your calories from grains you wouldn't get enough lysine but that that is important so that's the definition of an incomplete protein if you were to essentially get all of your calories from that food would you get all nine essential amino acids that's important in the context of a diet where there is not a great deal of diversity little to no diversity so perhaps in developing countries whereas when you are eating with just modest diversity what ends up happening is some of the foods that you're eating yeah they might be a little low in lysine but other foods are high in lysine and anyone can run this exercise if you were i mean if we take this to the full extreme and think of a diet that has no animal protein it's completely plant exclusive put it go use the app uh chronometer and just put a day of eating into that and it breaks down the nine essential amino acids and you'll see if you're eating sufficient calories and you're eating you know sufficient total protein for the day which we can come to and i want to come to then you'll get all of your nine essential amino acids in spades you know most of them would be like two 300 percent of what you actually require on a daily basis so the the main most important message here is that plants are not missing these essential amino acids if you eat enough total energy and total protein then you will get enough of the nine essential amino acids that are important for building muscle building strength hormone production collagen production all the things that we need amino acids for and someone might say okay but are they as bioavailable are they as digestible really good question great question um and i understand why people think this because that's that's another thing that comes up it's well yeah plants may have protein but can your body actually absorb and utilize that as well as animal protein that doesn't have anti-nutrients and fiber and things that could reduce amino acid bioavailability so there's a couple of uh things to to really consider here there is evidence that animal protein is more bioavailable than plant protein what is that evidence well the bulk majority of that evidence is from rats and pig studies and the pig studies are considered the most reliable because the digestive tract of a pig is very similar to a human the main problem with these studies is in almost all of these studies and christopher gardner brought this to my attention he's written a paper on this is that in almost all of those those studies they fed the the animals raw plant protein and so when you feed raw grains and raw legumes for example it's no wonder that the bioavailability is lower we know that soaking and cooking these foods sort of liberates nutrients and makes them more bioavailable and in the very very small number of studies that have looked at actual bioavailability differences between animal and plant protein when prepared as you and I and the listeners would eat these foods.

54:10It says in this paper, and I'll share it with you, the differences are probably only a few percent. And so we've overestimated, likely we've overestimated. Now, granted, there isn't a lot of data here. So it's not like every single plant protein has been tested against every single animal protein. But what I would say is that it seems we've probably overestimated differences in bioavailability. and and then i would say well why don't we go to studies looking at randomized controlled trials where we split people into two groups and again take this to the extreme have one group who only gets their protein from plants and the other group that gets their protein from a mix of animal proteins and plants as you would see in a kind of typical omnivorous diet and and let's let's match total protein let's put total protein remember before i said as long as you're getting enough total protein these it probably doesn't make a difference let's match total protein let's get that to 1.6 grams per kilogram which is probably that lower threshold lower threshold of what we would say is an ideal target if you're trying to really optimize for hypertrophy which is muscle growth and strength okay whether you're a recreational or professional athlete there are contexts where you might want more than that we can go into it but we now have several of these studies at least in healthy adults i believe one of the papers was men and women and the other paper i'm thinking of here was just men where they get these adults one group's eating only plant protein the other group is getting a mix of animal and plant protein put it at 1.6 grams per kilogram put them both through resistance training protocols and over the course of 8 to 12 weeks measure any differences in muscle growth strength etc and you do not see any significant differences so what what i would kind of throw back to someone that wanted to kind of push back on plants being incomplete or complete or bioavailability is to say well what do you really care about do you really care about the the percentage of a particular amino acid in a food or do you care about things like hypertrophy and strength actual health outcomes because i know what i'm most interested in it's it's the outcomes like those like how are we going to reduce our risk of sarcopenia um and then and then to kind of broaden that which is where my message differs to some people like peter utair or lane norton is that i personally and this is a philosophy i adopted my my own life is i want to stay vital strong i want to be able to navigate my environment be at low risk of fractures as i'm aging but i also want to be at low risk of cardiometabolic disease and we have quite significant data that consistently shows swapping calories from animal protein for plant protein is a good way to reduce the risk of certain cardiometabolic diseases so my kind of overall thesis is that i think you know leaning more towards plant protein it doesn't have to be exclusive but the average diet right now is 85 percent of protein is coming from animal sources i think we can i think we can tilt that and even if you just get it 50 50 that's some good substitutions that are occurring and you will be able to still perform get those strength hypertrophy results you're looking for but at the same time optimize your cardiometabolic risk factors and you know i think the way i look at it is you're kind of getting the best of both worlds there when you're thinking about protein especially plant-based protein how should we be mapping it in terms of our performance and exercise especially strength and resistance training because i think that's a really confusing landscape some people say the most optimal time for protein is the first protein intake of the day other people completely disagree with that concept and so like the space of this especially this one topical concept is huge and it is so confusing so what's your view on how should we be looking at our protein throughout the day and my view on this has changed a little bit and there's been some recent research looking at protein distribution and muscle protein synthesis um you know i probably thought previously it was more important to have these kind of equal doses of 25 to 35 grams of protein four or five times a day yeah to be honest about five years ago that's what everyone was saying and now i would say i'm i still think distribution matters but total protein intake is what really matters you just have to give your body the total sort of pool of amino acids over a 24-hour period and that's by far and away the most critical factor so if your target is 100 grams per day of protein just make sure you're getting that like let's keep it simple there could be some extra benefits that are up for grabs maybe if you were to kind of space that out and have four meals of 25 grams versus one meal of 100 grams but i'm starting to think that might not be so important okay so you're saying as long as you can just get it in it doesn't actually matter too much about the distribution there was this idea that anything over 25 30 grams of protein is wasted um and i think we're starting to learn that that's that's not accurate it's not that if you consume over 30 grams in a single meal that the body excretes the excess amino acids or that they don't stick around and help with building of muscle later on in that 24-hour period i i think they do um and so yeah i would say don't get caught up too much in the distribution of protein and they you know there are some other reasons for having protein at every meal other than just muscle hypertrophy so i don't want to kind of get too caught in the weeds here distribution i think matters from um the perspective of satiety um and also being practical like is someone going to get 100 grams of protein in one meal so i was trying to vision that when you said it to me i was like how much how much would they have to eat in one sitting to get that quite a lot yeah i mean i've probably confused the listeners here a little bit i guess what i'm what i'm saying in terms of your if you go to the gym you do resistance training um and you want to recover and get the you know actually provide the body with the nutrition it needs to take that stimulus and lay down new muscle tissue and grow stronger.

1:01:07Just getting enough protein in a 24-hour period is really, really what matters most. Because there was also that other argument about having too much protein can also be not beneficial for you. And so there's kind of two very distinct camps here. What do you think the answer is on that? Can we have too much protein in one sitting? Is it going to harm us? I've had some debates on this on my show. I've had Volta Longo on, who's a little bit more of the low protein camp i've had don layman on who is more of a high protein camp then i've had chris gardner and stewart phillips who i'd say kind of are sitting more towards the middle yeah of that um i think the data on like protein restriction being good for longevity is pretty weak and it's it's pretty flimsy when you actually dig deep into it a lot of it's animal rodent data these animals are living in caged environments they're they don't have to be strong and agile and navigating the environment like we do out in the wild they don't need a really robust immune system proteins very important for immunity because they're in a sterile condition they're not sort of exposed to other biology and the sort of very very kind of let's say weak human data that we have observational data that low protein is is associated with reduced mortality and cancer incidents you have to remember that the this study is looking at the average American who's not doing any really no resistance training they're obese there's um you know inflammatory sort of milieu and yeah maybe in that environment if someone's not exercising and is significantly overweight and is inflamed then just throwing a whole lot of extra protein into that environment is probably not great um but we have the studies that have looked at what happens to growth hormones like IGF-1, which is people often say protein spikes IGF-1 and increases cancer.

1:03:23What I would say to people is proteins affect on IGF-1 and chronic levels of IGF-1 seems to be determined by whether or not you're actually exercising. And there's studies that have looked at that. And so you feed people protein that are not exercising and look at IGF-1 24 hours later, feed people protein plus get them to resistance train look at igf1 24 hours later and when they have the resistance training stimulus there igf1 does not go up so i would say i don't think people need to fear protein i think certainly if you are going to optimize for protein first you want to optimize your exercise which means resistance training and doing resistance training properly effectively probably a better word there are some principles for people to think about there such that that protein is actually being put to to good use and should people have protein before working out i think that's another big question that we got asked after our last kind of protein conversation on the show i don't think it matters that much if they've eaten enough protein the day before okay i don't think we have a lot of data to suggest that you know you need to to to kind of skull uh a protein shake before you go into the gym but what about a protein shake after because there's a lot of conversation about protein shakes being good protein shakes being bad do we need protein shakes should we not be getting it from our food like what's your for the kind of optimal way and that's kind of how i'm thinking about it if people should they be choosing food over a protein shake a protein shake is bad what's your view on this is it's i don't think protein shakes are bad i don't think they're bad i think they have their place you know someone needs to look at let's say for example someone wants to target 1.6 grams per kilogram of protein and let's say that their total protein intake is 90 grams per day that person might be completely fine getting that protein from whole foods but then let's say someone else who is a bigger person has to get 150 160 170 grams of protein per day it's a different context you're asking that person to eat a lot of fiber or you know just a lot of total food volume and protein powders can be convenient and they can be a good way to get that extra protein in when you're already feeling quite full from other foods i think there's this this idea that protein powder is a process therefore they must be bad and i think that falls into a kind of appeal to nature fallacy that just because something isn't found in nature it isn't it must be bad and and and i'm not there are a lot of foods that are processed that are not healthy but we have to be careful just what putting everything into the same bucket because they don't have the same characteristics um and i and so i i see very little harm from from protein powders um the the only time where i think they could be problematic is if you're getting you know almost all of your protein from them then what that's displacing from the diet is a lot of protein rich foods that come with a lot of vitamins and minerals and fiber etc so so if you're displacing a lot of these foods by just trying to get all your protein from protein powder i wouldn't suggest that i'd suggest it as kind of just like a top up just getting you to that optimal protein target making it a little bit easier but not sort of over relying on it like i i would have like probably 30 to 40 grams of protein from protein powder a day myself and my target where i would land is 150 160 grams okay and i mean there is that there is that thing of just looking at the protein powder you're buying because there's just so much on the market and seeing actually what is the simplest form that you can buy that might not be full of the story that i heard recently was someone was really struggling to sleep and because they were working out in the evening and their protein powder had so much caffeine in they just had no idea and so for them that was like i just said have the protein powder but just choose one without caffeine and it's just that kind of simplistic messaging that sometimes we just don't actually look at the back and think probably not appropriate for my evening workout but it's interesting like how we can become quite unaware of what are in the products that we're buying i think that's kind of a really big talking point yeah i've done that myself actually i remember being in bali and i i bought this tub of protein over there um and it's like it was like a pre-workout protein i'd never seen that before i'm not sure why they actually did that it's crazy and i didn't read it clearly and had that right before bed and literally didn't get didn't get any sleep at all so that's that was terribly frustrating but you know now i use it the thing that i look for on protein now is i want roughly 30 grams in a protein shake that i'm going to have 30 grams of protein and i like when brands list the amino acid profile there is one thing on there that i will look for i like to see at least 2 000 milligrams or 2 grams of leucine that that That is an important amino acid for supporting muscle protein synthesis.

1:08:57So like now I'm using a brand in the US, I'm not sure it's in the UK, called Momentus. And that kind of has like two and a half or three grams of leucine for 30 grams of protein. The other thing, Sarah, just quickly that I realized I didn't, I kind of skipped over it. I just want to make something clear. Yeah. uh the average protein intake in western countries kind of without people really thinking about it is about 1.1 to 1.2 grams per kilo and you know that's a little bit debatable depending on which study you look at and also yeah the the type of diet someone's following so as someone gets more plant-based it is definitely true their total protein intake tends to go down a bit in some studies it's more like one gram per kilogram so um you know potentially if someone's eating that way they need to focus a little more on the protein rich plant foods to to consume the same amount as the average person that's eating an omnivorous diet for sure um but there's this really interesting research that's looked at strength and we know strength is a really great predictor of mortality and it's looked at how does strength change with varying levels of protein intake in two different contexts so one is if you just increase protein and you're not doing resistance training what happens to strength and so there's this beautiful graph i'll share share this with you well you basically see nothing right so as you can you can you can increased protein but if the stimulus is not there remember like structure reflects function our body adapts to stress and resistance training is a form of stress and if you don't have that primary anabolic sort of signal there it doesn't matter how much protein you consume you're not going to get stronger you're not going to develop more lean tissue and then what's really interesting is in the other graph you'll see that okay now we look at people that are resistance training what happens to strength as you increase protein and what's really really interesting here is that most of the strength gain is actually achieved at 1.2 grams per kilogram which is the average intake of protein across society there is a little bit maybe like an extra 10 15 percent getting from 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram okay so so you could kind of squeeze out the last you know drips of water in that towel by doing that but what this says to me is you know why do we see so much sarcopenia and loss of strength as people are aging when the average intake is already at 1.2 grams per kilogram and we know that by that point as long as resistance training is there that's where most of the strength is achieved strength gain and the reason is you know 70 to 80 percent of people are not lifting there's there's a lack of the stimulus so i just want to point out to people that we often over focus on protein and get caught up on that but literally if most people didn't change their diet that much and got resistance training in place and did it effectively we would see significantly less sarcopenia so

1:12:29Thank you.