Office Hours: How Much Protein Do You Actually Need (Most People Are Getting This Wrong) - Transcript

Mark Hyman
The problem is that there's a threshold for muscle protein synthesis, and this is really important for people to understand. If you are eating less than two and a half grams of leucine in about 25 to 30 grams of protein, That protein is not necessarily turning into muscle. So there's a there's a switch in your body that is required to turn on what we call muscle protein synthesis. In other words, building new muscle. Welcome to Office Hours.

I'm here with my producer, Emma. And today, we're gonna talk about something that everybody's talking about, but often is poorly understood, which is protein.

Emma
I feel like everything I'm seeing right now is all about protein, whether it's in the grocery store or what I'm seeing on social media. Everyone talking about getting more protein into their diet. And I'm a bit confused about it. So I wanna talk to you today about some common questions that myself and I'm sure the audience has. And I really wanna break down what matters for my muscle, my metabolism, aging, and my overall health.

To start, I wanna ask you the biggest question. How much protein does the average person actually need in a day?

Mark Hyman
Well, before we get kinda down that rabbit hole, let's just talk about what's happening in the culture. You know, low fat was a thing, and then we had low fat cookies. Right? And that made everybody obese and diabetic. And then it was like low carb or high fiber, whatever it is.

It's like the industry... The food industry goes crazy when the culture hits some inflection point where people are aware of a particular compound or ingredient or nutrient, and it's happening around protein. So you go to the grocery store, you see protein Pop Tarts, you see protein Cheerios, you see protein Starbucks smoothies, you see protein protein Dunkin' Donuts smoothies. It's it's it's so bad. It's all sugar with some protein, and you do not wanna have that.

Yes. Maybe adding the protein makes it a little less bad. Maybe it slows the absorption a little bit. Maybe you get extra nutrients you didn't get, but do not get your protein from anything other than real food, please. Okay.

So with that said, how much protein do we need? It depends. When we're younger, we need more. When we're older, we need more. In the middle of the years, we need less.

You know, it basically... If you're strength training, which by the way should be, and I... And I'm I'm embarrassed to say this, but I I didn't really... Even though I advise people to do this for most of my life because I saw the science, I convinced myself that yoga was strength training. And I was doing yoga, and I would run, and I would bike, and I was like, ugh.

But I was scrawny, and I couldn't do 10 push ups at 50 years old. And I finally was like, I better get my ass in gear. And I started lifting weights and doing strength training, and now I'm in better shape than I've ever been. And and it's not that hard. It's just compounding interest of doing a little bit every day.

This episode is brought to you by Function Health, empowering you to live a 100 healthy years with over a 160 lab tests for just $365 a year. And use the code mark twenty twenty six to get $50 off your membership. If you are strength training and you... Which what you should be, you wanna eat about a pound... A gram per pound of ideal body weight.

So let's say, you know, Emma, your ideal body weight's a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty. That means about a hundred and twenty to thirty grams. It can be, like, point seven to one gram of protein per pound of ideal body weight. If you're three hundred pounds, you don't wanna eat 300 grams of protein because you're basically gonna... You don't need that much.

And often, excess protein gets turned into sugar. So if you if you exceed a a certain amount of protein, there's a process in the body called gluconeogenesis, essentially, that turns protein into sugar. And so that's why people say, you know, you can you can actually not have any sugar in your diet. You can go completely keto, cut out every single carbohydrate, and your body still... You check your blood, and you still have a good blood sugar.

Why? Because your protein is getting converted into sugar. That's what actually is happening. So basically, that's the rule. If you're older, there's something called anabolic resistance, which means your body is resistant to anabolism, which means building things up, to building muscle specifically.

And so you need more protein to overcome that resistance. If you're an athlete, if you're doing more strength training, if you wanna build more muscle, you can you can do a little more. But basically, that's around the the the sort of framework. And the new dietary guidelines, which I helped advise on, kind of lay this out pretty well. But what those guidelines did was they basically activated this whole processed food industry to put protein in everything, and that was the wrong thing.

Emma
You mentioned there about how to figure out what your ideal protein intake is. Say for someone that is either trying to put on weight, put on muscle, or someone that's trying to lose weight, what should they be calculating their protein intake on? Is that their current weight, or would it be their goal or ideal weight?

Mark Hyman
Your goal or ideal weight. Right? So, like, I... My ideal weight's a hundred and eighty or maybe a hundred and eighty five. So I would probably wanna eat between a 150 to a 180 grams of protein a day.

And and it sounds like a lot, but it's not it's not that hard to do. Like, if... You know, this morning, I had a 45 gram protein shake, which was 45 grams of whey protein after I did my workout with 10 grams of creatine. And that... That's a great way to start the day.

And and and and one of the problem is most people... We'll get into this, but most people start their day with sugar, not fat and protein. We have dessert for breakfast in America. We have cereal. We have muffins.

We have bagels. We have French toast. We have pancakes. We have Pop Tarts. We have Starbucks Frate, Fulpa Shippa Lattes, or whatever it is.

We have we have like... We have all I haven't had that one. Making that up. I haven't tried it yet. But bay...

Basically, we eat sugar for breakfast, and croissants, and all this stuff. It's just so bad for us. And you need protein and fat in the morning, not sugar. It's probably the most important thing you can do to reset your health every day.

Emma
Is there ever a point where, like, where protein becomes not... Like, stops being beneficial? Can you eat too much protein?

Mark Hyman
You you know, if your kidneys are functioning well, you can't really hurt yourself by eating too much protein. But again, it just will turn... There's a point where your body can't use it. The problem is that there's a threshold for muscle protein synthesis, and this is really important for people to understand. If you are eating less than two and a half grams of leucine in about 25 to 30 grams of protein, that protein is not necessarily turning into muscle.

So there's a there's a switch in your body that is required to turn on what we call muscle protein synthesis. In other words, building a new muscle. And that requires two and a half grams of leucine, which is the rate limiting amino acid required to turn on that switch. If you're eating vegan proteins,

Mark Hyman
beans,

Mark Hyman
you know, and grains, you... They're very low in leucine typically. So you either have to jack them up with supplemental amino acids, which you can through supplements, or you need to be sure you're eating animal food or animal protein, whether it's whey protein or chicken or fish or meat. Those all really have high levels. And and you, for example, the volume is also different.

So for example, if you wanna get, like, what we would get in a four ounce steak, you'd have to eat two cups of beans or six cups of brown rice to get that amount of protein, which has enormous amount of calories for like 200 calories versus like thousands plus calories. And and that's just not sustainable. So I think, you know, we see... I and I see this typically in vegans unless you are... And I've seen vegans who overcome this, but they they they have to take a lot of extra supplemental processed protein powders.

And that's that's another issue is what's in them and how they're made and are... You know? But if you take concentrated proteins, you can overcome this protein deficit we get with vegans. But I think, you know, there's a lot of fear around protein, and it's like, oh, protein's gonna turn on mTOR. So a lot of people in the in the longevity space go, well, you know, the mTOR activation causes cancer and aging, and it prevents autophagy and cellular repair and renewal.

So you don't need protein because it turns on mTOR, which basically is a switch in the body. But this is like a Goldilocks thing. You need to turn on and off. You need the right amount of time where it's off, and you need the right amount of time where it's on. And you can't go through life not having muscle protein synthesis.

It's so important for making proteins, which is such a core function of your body. It's the only macronutrient we need in gram amounts, like huge amounts. For example, fatty acids, we only need in, like, milligram amounts. Protein, we need in, you know, a 100 grams. Whereas carbohydrates, there's zero essential carbohydrates.

There's no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. There's essential amino acids. There's essential fatty acids. But you could never eat a carb in your life, and your body will do whatever it's supposed to do. And as we evolved eating keto diets just naturally on and off because of fasting or because of of the way we ate with, you know, being countries or gatherers.

But the... It's important to understand that protein is the only macronutrient you need in gram amounts. And so often, the the amount people are getting and the way they're getting it is not right. And you'll see this huge problem in America called sarcopenia. This is muscle loss.

It's like osteoporosis. Osteopenia is bone loss, but sarcopenia means loss of muscle. And also your muscle, even if you're a normal weight, can turn into marbled fat. And that's like not good, like a rib eye steak or Wagyu beef instead of like a filet mignon. And that's really important because when you have unhealthy muscle or you don't have enough muscle, your entire metabolic system doesn't work well.

Your entire inflammatory system is is activated to turn inflammation. Your insulin signaling is screwed up. So so many things happen downstream of having poor muscle, or not enough muscle, or poorly functioning muscle, or fatty infiltrated muscle. So having the right diet to optimize muscle protein synthesis is key. And you also...

And conversely, you want a pause, which is what when a lot of people talk about as this sort of fasting idea or intermittent fasting or longer fast. And what happens when you don't eat overnight is your body turns on the repair system. So you're pausing mTOR activation overnight. So that's why I say everybody should have a minimum of a twelve hour fast. The most people in America don't.

They just eat late, and they wake up the morning and eat. Not good. You want twelve hours is eating dinner at six at night and having breakfast at six in the morning. Do a fourteen hour fast is eating dinner at six and having breakfast at eight. That's just normal life.

But most people don't do it. So fourteen hour fast is a good amount of time to be fasting. I mean, you're only eating ten hours a day. You're fasting fourteen hours a day. That's actually good for your body, and that will help both activate autophagy, cellular repair, cleanup, and renewal, and longevity, but also will activate mTOR if you're eating right in the day.

Emma
I'd love to go more into aging. I know we talked briefly about antibiotic resistance there, but how does getting enough protein help protect against muscle loss as we age?

Mark Hyman
Think about protein as the building blocks for muscle. Your muscle is protein. If you want to build muscle, you gotta eat muscle. I mean, muscle of an animal, which is fish, chicken, meat, those are muscles, actual muscles of the animal. We don't call them that, but that's what it is.

And and so when you eat muscle, you make muscle. And and I think it's it's important people to understand that connection between their diet and and their muscle health. And as you get older, you just get less good at it, and you need more of it, and you need more strength training. The good news is, and I'm a proof of this, and I I would not have believed it if I hadn't have seen it myself. But now at 60, almost 67, I'll be 67 in in November, I actually have more muscle than I've ever had in my life.

And I have pictures to prove it. And I and I and

Emma
I

Mark Hyman
did it after losing 25 pounds of muscle when I had my back issue, and I was in the hospital infection, and I was in bed for six weeks. So I lost an enormous amount of muscle at 65, and I was like, oh, shit. Can I actually rebuild this muscle? And I did not know I could. And so what I what I actually proved to myself, I mean, it's a case of one for sure, but I've seen many many people do this.

At any age, you can do this. And I'm... My father was 89, and he couldn't get up out of a chair. And like, dad, you need strength training. He's a girl, I go to the gym.

Like, you need someone with you because you're doing it wrong. And so I got him a trainer, and I got him to the gym, and he gained enormous amount of muscle and function as he got older. So the purpose of having more muscle is not to look good in a bathing suit. It's not to... You know, for some vanity metric.

It's because it helps you function better as you age. You can walk, you can get up, you can carry groceries, you can get on the floor, you can get up off the floor. And I can't tell how many people like fall, and they can't get up. You hear this story over and over. I fell, and I can't get up.

And my my friend's mother had this other night. She... 90, and she fell, and she couldn't get up off the floor. She didn't break her hip. She didn't do anything.

She just couldn't get up off the floor. That's not something you want. I wanna be able to get up on the floor when I'm a 100 years old. You wanna be able to tear your groceries. You wanna be able to pick up your grandkid or your great grandkid.

I mean, that's the purpose. And you also wanna address your chronic disease risk because having adequate high functioning, high quality muscle improves all your downstream risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia, all the things that four horsemen of the apocalypse of death, which get us, muscle is the key to helping those things not happen to you. Thank God I don't have any of those. I I just like... I'm just saying that it you know, I I...

This is not rocket science. It's just good science. And I think there's a great group called Protein Age, or pro... The Protein Age Group, and Don Lehman was part of this, and he's been on the podcast, so we can link to his podcast about protein. And we've had Gabriel Lyon talk about this as well.

But this Protein Age Group is a group of international scientists, all experts in protein. They came together to assess, you know, what are our protein needs? What should we be having? How should we be consuming them? And and and when should we be consuming them?

And I think, you know, when you're when you're untrained, you know, having it within one or two hours of eating, of exercising is important. If you're well trained, you can, you know, you're... You you can have it spread out, but you want to make sure you don't... You want you want to have it ideally within an hour or two when you train. And that will give you the most gains in muscle and help your muscle be the healthiest it can.

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Emma
Okay. I wanna come back to this timing thing that you just you just touched on there. I wanna have... Ask you one more question in re... In regards to aging.

For individuals, you you answered my question of, okay, I'm in my fifties, and I realized I haven't been eating enough protein. Can I start building my muscle at these, like, later ages? You've confirmed. That's correct.

Mark Hyman
I mean, I I couldn't do 10 push ups at 50 years old. Now I can do 50 push ups, 75 push ups nonstop. So I saw you do those chin ups in your morning routine. We saw it. Yes.

I couldn't do a single pull up. Like, not one. I couldn't get a one pull up.

Emma
Wow. What about if you are in your fifties, your sixties, you're listening to this podcast, and you're thinking, okay. I want to start building my muscle. I I understand the benefit of it. If you're just consuming more protein, can you build muscle, or do you have to do weight training alongside it?

Mark Hyman
You know, it's a really interesting question. Yes. You know, doing normal activities if you eat enough protein will help. Creatine is also fascinating. There's some really new data that even without exercise, creatine can improve muscle health, muscle size, and and actually strength, which is kind of interesting.

I I think that there's some new data on that. So, you know, the answer is you will get a little bit of benefit, but you you think of it like, you know, putting a bunch of ingredients in the soup pot, like a chicken soup, put a chicken in there, you put vegetables, put water, but you don't turn the heat on. It's not gonna become chicken soup. So exercise like turning the heat on to cook your soup. You gotta do strength training if you wanna build muscle.

Emma
Okay. That's a good example, the

Mark Hyman
the

Emma
soup analogy. I like that. Let's go back to timing. So does it matter how you spread your protein out throughout the day? Or I feel like, you know, dinner is usually a bigger meal for people maybe.

Maybe they're having more time to be able to prepare meat source or something. Do you need to spread it out all throughout the day, or is it okay if you eat it maybe during one meal?

Mark Hyman
You can't really... You know, your body can't really process large amounts of protein at once. It'll spread out during the day. So for example, if I'm on a 150 grams of protein, could have, you know, 45 for breakfast. I could have, you know, 50 at lunch.

I could have, you know, or 60 at dinner or whatever. You know, four ounces of steak is 30 grams. So if I have an eight ounce steak, that's 60 grams. It's not like an enormous amount. It's not like you have to eat 40 steaks a day or anything like that.

Although I know some bodybuilders who do that, but, like, it's crazy. But, you know, if you really wanna be like a mystery universe, you're gonna have to consume massive amounts of protein and do massive amounts of strength training. Mean, that's not necessary. It's probably not that good for you either. So I think I think the the idea is to spread it out throughout the day.

For example, can have an omelet for breakfast with, you know, something in there like cheese, if you want, for protein. Or you can have a protein shake in the morning, which I often do, like a whey protein shake, and I'll put a bunch of other goodies in there like creatine. For lunch, you can have a big salad, but you can throw a can of sardines on there, or a can of of salmon. Super easy. You can throw nuts and seeds in there, which is extra protein.

You can mix and match. If you add plant proteins with animal proteins, it it improves the function of the plant proteins. Whereas if you have plant proteins on their own, they're they're not as good at muscle protein synthesis, and the data on this is very clear. I mean, over and over, study after study, when you compare animal to vegan proteins for per muscle building, the the animal protein was out every time. So it's not that you won't build it a little bit with with vegan protein, but you just need you need the right kind of protein.

You probably added amino acids. You need a lot more. And then and then for dinner, you know, you can have a a chicken, fish, meat, steak, whatever you want with vegetables and with with, like, a sweet potato or other things. So for dinner, I'm having a a ribeye steak with sweet... Tippany sweet potatoes and some, you know, bok choy, and that's kind of be my dinner.

So that's that's a great way to, you know, have mostly vegetables on your plate, but but the side of protein, but the protein's gotta be the right amount for you. And it depends on your age, your size, your weight, your sex. So it it varies. But but, you know, you need to make sure you're having adequate amounts of protein spread throughout the day. Because if you consume more than, you know, the...

You know, like, if you consume a 100 grams at once, your body's not gonna be able to use it all. It'll get turned to sugar.

Emma
So do we need to eat protein immediately after we are working out? Or this anabolic window, is that exaggerated, or should I be following that?

Mark Hyman
Yeah. So so so if you're a well trained person and you do strength training regularly, and you you know, it's not as essential to consume the protein right after you exercise. But if you're starting out, like for example, when I was starting out, I always would do a workout, and then I would go make a big protein shake, like a whey protein shake. Because whey is probably the most efficiently converted into muscle of of most proteins, and it also helps with glutathione production. It...

You know, I use goat whey. I don't... Dairy is something problematic for me, but, you know, if you have a good quality grass fed whey, there's native whey, there's a lot of other, you know, healthier versions of whey that are be highly processed. A lot of whey proteins are just full of chemicals and sugar and all kinds of crap, so you have to make sure you're... You're looking into labels.

And then, you you know, you add ten grams of creatine, which is good for muscle and brain, and you're gonna get a huge benefit from that. And I notice it when I'm when I'm traveling, and I don't have that, and I I still work out, but I don't... I can't... I go try to eat the thing in the restaurant, or I'll get... But I can't always get the creatine.

I'm kind of lazy. I just don't have my act together, so I'm really busy. I... I'll notice that I I will come back, and I've lost a few pounds of muscle even though I'm working on it. So I think it's important to make sure you kind of have the right combination of stuff.

Emma
Can you explain the difference between what a complete and incomplete protein is?

Mark Hyman
Well, what a complete protein means is does that protein contain all nine essential amino acids? And plants typically don't. So they talk about combining beans and grains to get these complete amino acid profiles. However, even though they might have, for example, leucine, they don't have it in the right amounts to turn on the switch for muscle protein synthesis. So that's kind of tricky.

And I think, you know, Andrew Huberman just came out with a new book called protocols. He's got a very interesting perspective in there, which essentially treats beans and grains as carbs, not protein. So vegans would definitely have a pretty big beef with that, but I I haven't read his whole rationale. I've gotta get into it, but I think it was an interesting framework. And I I kind of also see it that way too.

I think, you know, they are high in starch. They're also high in fiber, which can be good. They're high in nutrients, which can be good, But they're not the most optimal sources of protein. And then there are optimal plant sources. For example, tofu and tempeh are probably the most concentrated low starch versions.

People eat those that are great, and they don't have a soy allergy or problem. They can be really great, especially if they're organic. I think, you know, there's there's other plant proteins out there that... There are pea proteins and concentrated proteins that can also be good. But again, the plant proteins, unless they're jacked up with additional amino acids, they they won't activate that that muscle building switch.

Emma
You've mentioned and trickled in some examples of your favorite protein sources. Is there any more whole food protein sources that you love?

Mark Hyman
I mean, it's not that complicated. I mean, all the, you know, chicken, there's fish, duck, you know, meat, lamb. I mean, I don't like pork that much, but that can be a great source. Eggs, whey protein, those are all great source of protein. There are also beef proteins now in the market.

A lot of them are are collagen proteins, which again don't have all the complete amino acids. So when you're taking... I'm taking a beef protein. I want... You want to make sure that it's it's a complete beef or it's combined.

Some of them combine it with eggs. So you'll see, like various brands out there that combine beef collagen protein with eggs to get a better protein source. So people don't want dairy. There's there's options out there.

Emma
One concern that I I hear people say often is if they eat too much protein, it could be bad for your kidneys. Is that true?

Mark Hyman
Well, that comes from it comes from the fact that when you have kidney failure, that you you can't process protein, and you need to be on a lower protein diet. So that is true. It's actually true. However, if your kidneys are functioning well, you will handle it. It's out...

You wouldn't worry. You shouldn't worry about it. It's basically how everything works in your body. If if I... I'm metabolically tuned up, and I go inside I wanna have French toast like I did on Sunday because I was like, it was Sunday brunch, and I I I have a emotional connection to French toast from my childhood, and I don't think I've had it in probably ten years, and it looked like really good brioche French toast.

I'm like, okay. Well, I'm gonna have this, and I'm gonna enjoy it. And, you know, I metabolically can handle it. I'm not gonna all of a sudden raise my blood sugar to 200. I I...

My insulin levels are not gonna spike that much because I'm I'm metabolically tuned up, and I can handle it. But if I did that every day, I'd be in trouble. By way, it's good French toast too with strawberries, and I had, like... It was good.

Emma
I wanted to ask what you what you had for the toppings, but I

Mark Hyman
didn't The strawberries and maple syrup. Yeah. Absolutely. I went I went for it. I was, like, going all in.

Emma
Might as well go all out. So besides individuals with kidney failure, is there anyone else who needs to be cautious if they are interested in increasing their protein intake?

Mark Hyman
Not really. I mean, as long as long as kidney function is good, you wanna check your kidneys, you can do that at functionhealth.com. There's even a a more sophisticated kidney test that we offer called cystatin c, which I would encourage checking because it it changes before all the other kidney tests which we normally measure. And if if you get... Have early kidney disease, you want to be careful and find out what's causing it, manage it, deal with it.

But you can have that as an add on to the function basic membership, and we we offer that.

Emma
What about protein and heart health? Especially, we've talked a lot about eating red meat or animal foods. Is there anything people should be mindful there?

Mark Hyman
Yeah. I mean, I think, know, the whole meat question in health is is so complicated because most of the data is epidemiological, which means we follow people for decades. We see who eats what, and we see who gets what disease. It's not causal. In other words, we did this with the nurses' health study, and we found that women who took hormones had lower risk of heart disease and dementia and cancers, all kinds of stuff.

And there was an assumption that it was the hormones that was protecting women. And this was an observational study, and all these women got on hormones in the, you know, in this eighties, seventies, eighties, which were on these synthetic hormones. What actually, when the nurses' health study was then looked at as a clinical trial, which is called the Women's Health Initiative, was a multi thousand person, think, 130,000 women or so, billion and $0.5 study. It actually showed that that maybe there was increased risk of strokes and heart attacks and some cancers. And and then, you know, it it it not...

It wasn't as sort of obviously helpful. And the reason was that that the women in the Nurses' Health study who got the hormones were health conscious women. They went to the doctor to check their health, to get their mammograms, to get their colonoscopy. They didn't smoke. They didn't drink.

They ate healthy. They exercised. Of course, they had less disease. It wasn't the hormones. The same thing with the meat studies.

If you look at when these studies were done, there's a big ARP NIH study done, 500,000 people, and they looked at the the, you know, the meat eaters, and they said, oh god. The meat eaters had more heart attacks, more strokes, more cancer, more this, that. And and so it was like, a meat's bad for you. So what... When when...

And also saturated fat was a big issue. So there was this belief that meat was bad for you in the in the seventies, late sixties, seventies. And so when these studies were done, people who ate meat were people who didn't care about their health. So they... When you look at the...

They try to control for these things called confounding variables, which are basically things that can screw up the data, but it's impossible. They... The the meat meat eaters in that study smoked more, drank more, didn't take their vitamins, didn't eat fruits, vegetables, ate more processed food, ate 800 calories more a day, weighed more. Of course, they had more disease. It wasn't the meat.

There was another big observational study where they looked at meat eaters who shopped at health food stores. And they looked compared 11,000, I think, meat eaters and 11,000 vegetarians who shopped at health food stores. They both had their risk of death reduced in half. Why? Because they weren't eating processed food.

They're eating, you know, meat and the concept of a healthy diet. Now there is some data that the processed meats can increase the colon cancer risk, but it's it's basically increasing the risk from, like, five to six percent. And the background risk in the population is five per sick... Five percent for colon cancer increased to six percent. That's a twenty percent increase.

So it sounds like a lot, but it's like it's... The absolute risk is quite low, and it would... Basically, eating four pieces of bacon a day for decades would give you that risk. So it's it's... I I I don't encourage you to eat that much processed meats, but I'm just saying that that the the...

If you have a diet that's high in fiber, that's high in polyphenols, that's rich in plant foods, eating meat with it is not gonna be a problem. Stan Hayes in the Cleveland Clinic also showed this with with his studies on Tymia, which is something that's produced from meat in the colon if you have bad bugs in your gut. If you have red wine, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, it mitigates the effects because those things are polyphenols. I'm saying wine's good for you, but it might have some polyphenol effects. I wouldn't get the wine as a health food.

But but olive oil and balsamic vinegar, great, because they have all these compounds that can protect you. So I think it's important to understand that it's not the meat. It's what you eat it with that matters. And and and and I think, you know, if you're if you're concerned about it, you know, you can check your numbers. I think everybody responds differently to different things.

I think people should be checking their numbers and seeing how they respond. There's very large variations in genetics around lipids, around fatty acids, around cholesterol. And so the... People respond differently. And and most of the fatty acids in meat are stearic acid, which actually is neutral when it comes to cholesterol.

Like, dairy fat will increase cholesterol. Coconut will increase cholesterol. And and there was, you know, a large study of, like, I think, like, 700,000 people, different studies, all looking at sort of an assessment of multiple trials that were observational, interventional trials, blood testing trials. And they they found that, you know, saturated fats were kind of neutral, And that it... You know, that actually dairy fat might even be protective in some ways, and that, you know, we we kinda...

People are low in omega threes is is is harmful. So they were able to look at, you know, actually what was going on with people, and it didn't seem to be that big of an issue. So I've written a lot about this. I wrote a lot about it in my book, Food What the Heck Should I Eat? I wrote a lot about it in Eat Fat Get Thin.

But, you know, the data keeps accumulating. I think people still have this, you know, bogeyman fear of meat, but I I think it's not... It's it's actually not as harmful as we we thought it was, and I think it's more neutral. And you'll even hear people like Darius Mazafarian, who's the dean of was the dean of tough school nutrition science and policy, who just came up with the book Food is Medicine, been on the podcast. He he talks about meat as sort of a neutral thing.

You know, it's not a health food, but it's not it's not harmful. But I think in terms of muscle, it is healthy.

Emma
Does the body turn the excess protein into sugar, and should people with insulin resistance be worried about that?

Mark Hyman
Yeah. I think people with insulin resistance should not eat sugar and should not eat refined starches and probably don't wanna be getting their protein from grains and beans. And I have reversed many, many cases of type two diabetes on insulin with removing from their diet grains and beans. And Virta Health has done a lot of research on this showing that keto diets, which essentially no grains and beans, reverse type two diabetes in in sixty percent of the cases. Again, most people on lower doses are off insulin or medications.

The the meat itself is... I don't think it's gonna be a problem. If you're... All you're consuming is meat, probably not a good idea. If you're insulin resistant, you want more fat, you want more veggies, less starch, and, you know, adequate amounts of protein, but you don't have to overkill on the protein.

Emma
Okay. I want to talk about protein bars, protein powders, or these high protein foods that are everywhere now. So do most people need a protein powder, or do you think that we are able to source all of our protein from food?

Mark Hyman
We can get it all from food, for sure. I particularly find whey protein great for building muscle and delicious and easy to take, and I throw some frozen fruit in there, berries, banana or something. And I and I and I I like it. And it's it's it's a great way to consume a large amount of protein within little volume and less calories. So I particularly like that, but I I have super clean whey protein.

Don't have any other thing than whey in there. It's only whey. I use goat whey. It... There's some of the natural vanilla flavor, like actual vanilla flavor, which is fine.

But when it has all kinds of fillers, additives, gums, sugars, flavors, it's bad. And you really want to be careful of that stuff. And it... It's marketed as health foods, but they're actually harmful. Emulsifiers, all kinds of weird gums, these are not good for you.

Protein bars, there's very few out there that are actually good. There are there are few. There are a few. I've seen them. They have, like, whey protein.

They might have, you know, beef protein. They they are good, but they also come with a lot of other baggage most of the time, so you really wanna read the labels. I look at labels. I don't read the nutrition facts. I look at the ingredient list, and that's how I make my decision.

If it has a bunch of ingredients I don't recognize, they don't run my kitchen, I'm not eating it. You know? If it says, you know, like, whey protein and, like, you know, butter and wheat protein or nuts or seeds or whatever, I'll I'll eat it. But you have to be careful. There's a lot...

Yeah. There's a lot of things masquerading as a health foods out there, and that's how I started the show today was warning people about this health halo that the food industry has put on foods by adding protein to them, whether it's Pop Tarts or Cheerios or whatever. And that is... It's not it's not a health food, and it's not gonna make it better by adding protein.

Emma
I keep saying protein lattes everywhere.

Mark Hyman
Yeah. Protein lattes. Yeah. Yeah. I think Starbucks has captured the market of whey protein.

They've got protein foam, protein this, protein that. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, you know, I mean, basically, I always say Starbucks is essentially a sugar dispensary masquerading as a coffee shop. If I go to Starbucks, I get coffee. I'm like, can I have the black coffee?

I'll put a little Mhmm. Know, little almond milk or something in it. But, like, it's... Most of those drinks are just so terrible.

Emma
Can you break down the difference between whey protein, casein protein? You've mentioned collagen and pea protein. What's the difference between

Mark Hyman
So whey protein is a very complete protein, and it it it has all the amino acids in the right amounts, and it it actually is is is very minimally processed. It's like curds and whey from Little Miss Muffet. The curds is like the yogurt, and the whey is that liquidy stuff on top. It kind of separates out. So that's kind of it's actually been consumed for a long time, and it it...

It's it's sort of a natural product of of of dairy. Casein is is often something that's often very allergenic, and there's a one casein, a two casein. So you can, for example, get regeneratively raised a two cow dairy, which is... Has known in the... It's a more inflammatory casein.

But most protein shakes don't have huge amounts of casein. Whey has some casein in it, but but it's it's pretty minimal. And then there's collagen protein, but it's an incomplete protein. So it has a lot of things that support collagen production, like glycine and proline, and there's there's kinds of other nonessential amino acids, but it doesn't have all the nine essential amino acids, and it doesn't have enough of the right amount of leucine. So it's not a complete protein for building muscle.

So you have to be careful that there's a lot of these companies out there selling the collagen protein as your protein. I would not take it as a complete protein. Then there's pea proteins. There's other nut proteins. There's there's all kinds of weird, like, seeds and stuff.

There's a lot of great things out there that are plant based, but they usually... Sometimes they're healthier than others, but they're often like... You know, they may be more expensive. They're hard to get. And and so they're not getting mixed with bad things.

But there are a few brands out there, like, that I I like that I'll use that that I think are good, and I'll I'll occasionally use those as well.

Emma
There's now hundreds of food foods marketed as high protein. We keep talking about that in in this conversation. So what should people look out for when they're buying protein bars, shakes, cereals, snacks at the supermarket?

Mark Hyman
Make sure it's it's real food. That's bottom line. So it's sort of my go to answer for all this stuff. If it has an ingredient you wouldn't have in your kitchen and cook with, don't eat it. If it has something you can't pronounce, and it's in Latin, don't eat it.

If it has any weird sugar alcohols or emulsifiers, don't eat it. Those are harmful, like carrageenan. Even if they're, quote, natural, they can be harmful to the gut microbiome and the gut barrier lining. If it... You know, full of sugar with the protein, don't eat it.

Even if it's called sugar and protein, it's still sugar. So don't think it's got a a, you know, a a super benefit if you're just assuming, like like a, you know, like a latte with a bunch of protein and and tons of sugary syrup. That's not good for you. So you just had to be smart, and and it's common sense. Like, but as Mark Twain said, the problem with common sense is that it's not too common.

And so just use your noggin and and be smart and and look at the labels, read the ingredients, and and, you know, just have an honest assessment. Is this something you recognize on the label or not? And if it's not, don't eat it.

Emma
I love it. It's one of my favorite quotes. Common sense ain't common. I wanna ask you some rapid fire myths. So you don't need to give me an answer.

The only answer I'm looking for is true or false. You ready? You can only absorb thirty grams of protein at one time.

Mark Hyman
I think false.

Emma
I don't have the answer sheet. You're the answer

Mark Hyman
to I mean, it's it's sort of like ish, true ish. It's sort of

Mark Hyman
like

Mark Hyman
false ish.

Emma
Okay. We can we can accept that answer. Alrighty. True or false? Eating a high protein diet damages healthy kidneys.

False. True or false? Plant protein doesn't count.

Mark Hyman
It counts, but only in the right combination with other things. So it it it counts, but it's it's kind of a mixed answer.

Emma
True or false? You need a protein shake after every workout? No.

Mark Hyman
People just gonna eat a steak or have a piece of chicken or whatever. False.

Emma
Collagen can replace a regular protein powder.

Mark Hyman
No. False.

Emma
Yeah. That was a big one I learned today. True or false? Eating more protein automatically builds muscle.

Mark Hyman
A little.

Emma
False ish. A little. True or false, you need to eat meat to get enough protein.

Mark Hyman
Like like like cow or or you mean chicken or fish?

Emma
Or Animal products. Yeah. Animal products.

Mark Hyman
Honestly, unless you have really jacked up plant proteins that are, you know, modified by adding amino acids or other things, it's it's it's... You do need to eat animal protein. By the way, there's never been a voluntarily vegan society until the forties. In fact, the word vegan didn't even exist until the forties. So I think this is a new concept to humanity.

Hunter gatherers were clearly not vegans. They eat a lot of plants, but they also way eat meat.

Emma
True or false? High protein diets are only useful if you're trying to lose weight.

Mark Hyman
No. False.

Emma
True or false? Older adults need less food and therefore less protein.

Mark Hyman
No. That's false. They need actually more protein and probably a little more food. Appetite goes down. That's true.

But it's important to get adequate amounts of food and protein particularly more as you age.

Emma
True or false? Protein at breakfast matters more than most people realize.

Mark Hyman
True. 100% true.

Emma
As we close out here, I wanna ask you one more question. For someone listening who realizes they probably aren't getting enough protein, what are three things you'd have them do starting tomorrow?

Mark Hyman
I think what I would say is is, you know, come up with two to three breakfast, lunch, and dinners that are your go to. Like, I I have. Like, for example, in the morning, I either make, like, a lot of eggs. Because six eggs... You need six eggs to get a complete, like, 30 grams of protein.

So I'll make, like, an large omelet with veggies, or I'll have whey protein shake, but I make sure that I have I have protein in the morning, or I can have chicken sausages or whatever with my eggs to add up the protein. So I make sure I I have a two or three of those. For lunch, I would say it's important to to have protein. You can have, you know, what you'd have for dinner, you can have a salad with protein on it, you know, like a salad with a piece of chicken on it. It it it...

Know, with mostly veggies. I would have what I call a fat salad for lunch, which essentially lots of fats and protein. So I would have, obviously, paint make arugula, and I would put in olives. I would put in pumpkin seeds. I would put in maybe pine nuts, toasted.

I would put in olives. I put in avocado. All those are fats. And then I would use olive oil on top of that, and I would throw a can of wild salmon on top, or I'd open a can of sardines or mackerel, have it on the side with some seed crackers. So that's a great way to to do that.

And dinner, it'd be like, you know, piece of chicken and fish meat with probably... Depending on your... What you need, your requirements are. We can be four to six to eight to 12 ounces depending on how big you are and what you're needing. And then, you know, I usually have like a bunch of veggies, two or three veggie dishes.

I have roasted mushrooms, and I'll have lots of, you know, cruciferous vegetables. I'll make a salad. I'll have a tomato salad with, you know, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and basil, along with the artichoke, and stir fried broccolini, and then a sweet potato, and, you know, maybe I'll make a lamb chops or steak or something like that. So I think it just has to be pretty straightforward and simple, and and then you'll kind of go to it. For snacks, I always carry protein snacks with me.

I have, you know, like venison sticks or salmon jerky that, you know, Epic makes, which are great. Also, Maui Nui makes a protein... Eight gram protein, little kind of medicine sticks that are great, and they don't have any, like, weird chemicals in them. And I'll have also... Maybe I'll have nuts or nut butters.

So I always have protein and fat, and I also don't have plant proteins too, like the nuts, but that's kind of what I do, and I I don't have starchy snacks. I I think that's the worst thing. I don't really snack that much. I'll do it if I'm like stuck somewhere, and I I... I've always got a day's worth of food in my bag, so if I I get stuck in an airport or traveling or I miss a meal, I'll have enough to eat.

So I don't end up having to eat crappy airport food or what's what's around. It's it's because most of look at

Emma
Starbucks.

Mark Hyman
Yeah. I mean, you even look around when you go shopping. Most of the time, it's just it's just processed carbs. And then it's it's just everywhere. I would just say that I think we're in a bit of a protein craze phase in our culture.

I think it's kinda over swung the wrong way. I think that that it's infiltrated all the processed food companies, so be aware of that. With that said, it's important to get adequate protein, and you want about a gram of protein per ideal body weight, especially if you're strength training and you want to particularly pay more attention as you get older or if you're young and you're growing. Hey everybody, it's doctor Mark here. I'm so excited to share that my new book is officially available for preorder today.

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