I think people believe that at some point it's too late they've lost too much muscle maybe they're in their 60s maybe they're in their 70s and they're like it is what it is and I can't stop it I can't reverse it the truth is neither of those is true you can always build muscle you can always get stronger you see studies' 70s e getting stronger building muscle if you were to pick is it dietary protein or resistance train which is going to have a bigger impact on skeletal muscle it's absolutely when you think about what could an older person do or someone who's listening to this to improve their muscle span well number one it's understanding that ultimate human hey guys welcome back to the ultimate human podcast today is another short but we are going to take a deviation from our normally scheduled shorts because we have a very special guest in the house and I thought that you guys would really like to hear from her she's spending uh the night here at the biohacking um Palace and we started talking and she brought up A New Concept that she was working on and I'm like this is so good even though we have a podcast out there and you guys have probably seen it maybe even read her book um I just thought that this was such a unique thing that we should put it out there in one of my Thursday shorts so I hope you guys enjoy this welcome back to the ultimate human Dr Gabriel lion this is so fun and by the way your place is so big we're yelling for each other at the other Gary Gabrielle would she's in there checking out my cold plunge and like so where do I find her when I get to my house in the gym was like I am very jealous about your cold plunge I mean this this is a NeverEnding um it's just gonna never die the cold plunge yeah we we just gave uh we just gave the guys a plunge Ryan just got a nasty gram from Dr Gabrielle because she's like you have a nicer gold plunge than I do don't talk to me I love those guys um but you know you talk about a concept everybody knows you as the muscle Doc and you know you talk a lot about um uh muscle in your in your book and how it is linked to um longevity and everything and how it actually functions as an organ most people don't think about muscle as an organ I think we think about skin liver lungs pancreas kidneys we don't think about muscle and I love this new term that you've coined and I want to share it with the audience today so talk a little bit about that well first of all you're the first person that I've ever spoken about this so me and my million subscribers on YouTube but I I actually haven't brought this forward because um so my my book Forever Strong is all about this concept that muscle is the organ of longevity that it is above and beyond you know you found me in the gym I'm very interested in exercise because that's fun but skeletal muscle your survivability from nearly every kind of disease and just in life is going to improve with the more healthy muscle you have right now my New Concept so my original concept is muscle Centric medicine that diseases very familiar with that you've opened the first muscle Centric Clinic it's it's actually in the process right now um but my New Concept is something called muscle span we have the idea of lifespan which is how long you live and then of course there's Health span which is how long you live in good health and then there's muscle span yeah which I loved it so much I was like have you trademarked that yet she goes yes I already did um the idea of muscle span the amount of years you have healthy skeletal muscle and really it's in three parts it's when you're young as you're growing up you're training You're Building tendons and collagen and skeletal muscle right then of course midlife where you are maintaining and hopefully putting on skeletal muscle right really training that system and then the last portion of muscle span is obviously what you are doing to prevent sarcopenia age related muscle wasting that's right you know what's astounding is you know in the mortality space um which was my previous career you know we we we knew that Frailty in older Ages was a um tremendous risk factor for mortality um and it increased the risk of all cause mortality Peter T talks about this in his book when he talks about um grip strength you talk about it in your book um and I think that I'm really excited that it's coming to the Forefront because I think people believe that at some point it's too late right they've lost too much muscle maybe they're in their 60s maybe they're in their 70s and they're like you know it is what it is and I can't stop it I can't reverse it yeah um but the truth is neither of those is true that's true right you can always build muscle you can always get stronger you can always build muscle we see studies 70s 80s 8y olds that's what's really stronger building muscle we take it such for granted in in younger ages you know yeah and I I think that there's a way that we can prevent that I I there's primary and secondary sarcopenia primary sarcopenia is likely from some kind of genetic issue right just general muscle wasting at any age well I would say genetic or yeah I suppose it would be any age and then secondary sarcopenia would be really this idea of Lifestyle causing sarcopenia lifestyle decrease in physical activity unhealthy skeletal muscle sedentary Behavior you know sedentary behavior is not the opposite of activity sedentary behavior is a disease state within itself and so there are things in which people can do and interject earlier that I think that we're missing the boat so most people start worrying about sarcopenia uh so you'll see at age 50 you might see you know men seem to lose it quicker you might see 10% loss of skeletal muscle mass in in a decade so there's um skeletal muscle mass loss there's cross-sectional area changes there's there's all kinds of changes those are scary because because you actually see the diameter of the thigh for example doesn't change much the ratio of fat to Muscle really changes much when you see these cross-sectional images and of the same thigh yeah 10 years apart 15 years apart 20 years apart and and it looks like the muscle's literally just melting towards the center and um you know you get fat infiltration I think that this is all preventable the the thing about muscle span is that I think that there are some indications for youth sarcopenia wow which is crazy um two separate phenotypes we don't have a standard classification of it this is a new concept and I think that because of how sedentary our behaviors are and the way in which our nutrition is that sarcopenia has a youth phenotype meaning it can start much earlier wow now when you think about what are the the most impactful preventions their diet and exercise right and the other thing that I was thinking about is we wait until menopause or we wait until our testosterone decreases that we begin to think about skeletal muscle mass MH but what happens if we thought about this 5 to 10 years earlier yeah yeah you know what you know what's amazing uh in 201 13 14 15 16 um I was an investor in in a CrossFit gym and one of the things that they did for community outreach was they invited all the grade schools um and grammar schools for free um that you know bring kids in and they would do um basic Fitness tests like basic um things like sitting down on a on a box jump that was 12 in off the ground standing up um they would do try to do fun things with the kids you know dead hangs and jump uh jump lunges and things what blew my mind literally blew my mind it seared in my mind to to this day was we brought in a class of sixth or seventh graders um and all they had to do was squat down and touch their butt to uh one of our little box jumps that was 12 in off the floor so it's 12 in off the floor and then just stand up the number of kids that could not squat down and touch their butt they looked healthy could not just squat down and touch their butt to a 12-in high box jump without rolling to the side and putting on their hand on the floor um or without pushing up off off the box jump they they couldn't get up from this hypers squatted position below 90° and man the light bulb went off in me and I was like Wow first of all what happened the physical education in public schools it's a whole different issue um you know we exchanged it for God knows what but we're not really doing PE I had PE when I was it was mandatory when I was in gr school and and just I I just thought about wow man these kids are so deconditioned yeah um and they look healthy so I wasn't talking about obese kids or kids um relatively healthy kids they were all excited about it and they would come in and some of them popped down and popped up but but there was 30% of them or so that could not squat down and touch their buttons up and I was absolutely astounded by it I mean um that's something that you'll probably never forget and we are I don't remember the the number but the the rates of childhood obesity it's it 45% yeah continues to pre best and children are obese yeah I actually just had a podcast before you got here today so it's sting it's sitting on a stat on on on the floor right here and and and the study is uh cited in my previous podcast with um uh Justin from from Kettle and fire but so this concept of muscle span which I love that because it it's sort of linking lifespan and muscle and I think there's increasingly more evidence and thanks to people like yourself it's becoming more welln um because I think we think of muscle as vanity and we don't think of muscle as a functional organ and to change our concept of of muscle is healthy so what is what does muscle span really mean it means that the length of time we have healthy skeletal muscle the length of time we have healthy skeletal muscle you know and it's interesting because people think that we age in a way that is a linear Decline and it's not it's a period of catabolic crisis and Doug Patton Jones was one of the original individuals that really put this together and so when we age it's moments of um intense insult so someone might get pneumonia be on bed rest for 5 days or break an ankle or a hip the there's a series of catabolic crisis and as people age and if they don't train you know training is a much bigger stimulus than diet but 100% of people eat right if you were to pick is it diet resistance is it diet dietary protein or resistance training which is going to have a bigger impact on skeletal muscle it's absolutely training you cannot however build and maintain healthy skeletal muscle without dietary protein right so the two go hand in hand but when you think about what could an older person do or someone who's listening to this what could they do right that's exactly what I was going to ask you to um improve their muscle span well number one it's understanding that resistance that all movement has to be incorporated daily right it's not you don't work out for an hour a day and then you sit you're moving you're walking you're doing whatever it is that you're doing as active as you can be right understanding that when you do activity you have now sensitized your muscle to dietary protein you know hormetic stress causing the muscle to call for protein for technically for amino acids um well U from my understanding is when you contract skeletal muscle right there's this four real um inputs into skeletal muscle for muscle protein synthesis which is in essence what we would consider a biomarker for health which is you know we don't directly get muscle protein synthesis and then put on muscle it's not a onetoone but what we believe is is if you do resistance training and it could be something very simple it could be just stretch related body weight exercis so yes and then have dietary protein older muscle responds like younger Muscle really yeah so it it it engages in hypertrophy and hyperplasia it has a muscle protein synthetic response like a younger individual and really the Hallmark of this was uh kat sos' work um uh really showed that a young individual will respond to let's say protein dietary protein will respond to nearly any stimulus of protein maybe it's 10 grams maybe it's 20 but an older individual when you give them 20 grams of protein they won't respond but if you exercise them first and you exercise their muscle and then give them dietary protein their muscle responds like a younger muscle wow and so it then goes through this it has this muscle protein synthetic response and it helps overcome what we call anabolic resistance um or aging right and so old muscle can respond like young muscle I mean it's it's it makes a lot of sense if you don't load a bone it doesn't strengthen if you don't actually strain a muscle it doesn't grow right um if you don't challenge the immune system it weakens and so this is back to the basics of a hormetic stress um causing the body not only to strengthen but causing it to call for certain nutrients and and it sounds to me like in older ages it's increasingly more important to not just feed yourself protein and I think there's some indications that I've been reading lately that um we actually need more protein in older ages even even Dr wter Longo um who I interviewed few months ago at University of Southern California talked about the increased need of protein in older ages and not just the need for protein The increased need for increased protein in older ages yeah and um so that's absolutely right we know that right the current recommendations are based on 25-year-old healthy males 8 gram per kg or 37 gram per pound of body weight that is the minimum to prevent deficiencies and one has to recognize it doesn't take into account the quality of the protein where the protein comes from doesn't take into account the various amino acids that we need and so as we age the big thing with aging is impaired protein turnover protein turnover is muscle is enzymes is you name it hormones anything any structure any compound in the body but made from amino acids from amino acids a gut hormone you know gut turnover liver intestines impaired protein turnover is a real problem with aging we turn over around 300 grams of protein a day we might ingest 100 which means the body is responsible for making up the rest and as we age that process becomes less efficient and so it's making up the rest by assembling that protein from amino acids right so if you're amino acid deficient it can't assemble a protein very good point you know I I was telling uh I was talking to someone the other day about you know Target specific protein and saying that you really can't Target tissue in the body with protein you know for example we don't eat our nails to grow our nails we don't eat our hair to grow our hair um we can't eat collagen and have it show up as collagen you know it will show up as amino acids but not as collagen but then we we got into the whole discussion about the the um protein turnover if that's the the the right term you take in 30 grams of whe protein you assimilate about a third of that roughly um and so do you think that there are um certain proteins that people should be eating that have higher bioavailability um what about people that are vegans or vegetarians um should they be supplementing with protein should they be supplementing with amino acids I I think that these are all good questions and I would say um we digest and absorb all the protein that we we take in so if someone takes in a 100 grams of protein they digest all 100 where I think the concept of a meal threshold or an amino acid threshold comes in is is really targeted skeletal muscle for example to simplify this if someone eats um 55 grams of protein let's say 50 to 55 grams of protein then you've now maximally stimulated skeletal muscle because of again these different amino acids we'll say Lucine is is the primary which is an essential MH when that happens is there any benefit above th that 55 gram not for muscle per se but for the rest of the body but you would certainly absorb all of it now the question becomes how do we design a real life diet that's valuable M and could you eat plant proteins and get enough you could M as long as you eat more and maybe closer to 1.6 to 1.8 gram per kg if I was going to give a number and why would you say more because it's less that's exactly bioavailable turns over to less essential amino acids both of those reasons so you have less bioavailability you also have a different amino acid profile okay the bi whereas for example the bioavailability from eggs would be roughly 100% you are it's highly bioavailable protein the the protein from meat or fish it's all highly bioavailable plant protein is typically aside from an isolate which an isolate has a higher bioavailability because it's it's just an isolate is bound to fiber right bound to some plant source so um when we think about what is practical information that we can tell people to improve their muscle span it really is twofold pre-treat the body with resistance training MH always do resistance training and you know um we can come back to Zone 2 cardio I don't necessarily believe that the kind of volume that people are talking about is going to be healthy for AG aging I think the joints and things wear down um the other component is how do we design a diet that is Meaningful for muscle span and that would be you could easily say one gram per pound ideal body weight one gram per pound um the the next question would be how do you dose it and the evidence would support support that first and last meal that being the most important first meal between 40 and 50 gram last meal could be uh the same that middle meal is really just get your protein in and then the third component would be where is the quality of your protein coming from can you stimulate skeletal muscle purely by plant proteins absolutely okay you just need more and then the next question is is it just a protein conversation or are there things like creatine and zinc and b12 I just recently started taking creatine and I I got to say I I do feel pretty good um just five five grams so five grams is good for muscle and Darren at K's work would say that 10 to 12 grams is good for brain really mhm well I'm going to Triple my cre creatine um for sure he would actually be a wonderful a wonderful guest uh Dr Darren Crow he's amazing to the podcast if you see this shout out to doct a creatine expert oh is he is creatin expert yes that is what his research is in so I think that we have to think about how do we design a diet that is important and manageable for muscle span and that is clearly based on on dietary protein whatever the source and then thinking about if you are aging then the nutrient density has to be higher where are you getting the protein I think that when you are younger you know and this is just my perspective if you are younger you have more flexibility to be vegan or vegetarian right as you age and your calorie consumption goes down then you really have to think about how are you going to design a diet that perhaps is easy to follow and has a lower total calorie load with high quality protein and and in the case of being vegan or vegetarian just develop a supplementation regimen that helps you make up for the deficiency in protein it's not that you can't do those things that's right you can absolutely do those things and then the other thing is you know we don't train to be coming to become better at exercise right train to become better at life and so how do we design a training program that will take us through the different phases of muscle span when you're young you can pretty much do whatever it is really important to train tendons and be you know be you me like functional movements right so um where can my audience that hasn't seen the podcast that we did together where can my audience find you you can find me at Dr Gabriel line.com I have and that's l y n that's right I have a great podcast the Dr Gabriel L show okay A New York Times bestselling book Forever Strong thank you for and we have hosted you about the your book on the show yes thank you for the support um so my website oh you know what I also have a clinic with providers and nutritionists and they can learn all about it and we actually have a community which was inspired by you oh last time I was here remember you're telling me all about the community that you have so I've got the rule breas so we have a community they can learn all about it on my website drg line.com and Instagram all the places that you can find me I'm sure I forgot something where's your clinic so we have so it is remote okay we have a remote Clinic we're opening one in New York and I see patients in person in Houston wonderful guys please check out Dr Gabriel Lon check out the podcast that we did with her and her podcast show the Dr Gabriel lion show and as always guys that's just science