How Much PROTEIN You Really Need to Prevent Disease and Stay Strong

This could be enough protein to not die, but it's not enough to maintain your muscle mass, and it is not enough to build your muscle mass. So, over the last few years, scientists have realized that actually you should be aiming [Music] for Hello Angels and welcome to the Glucose Goddess Show. I'm Justine Chespe.

I'm a biochemist and I'm French and I love science and I want you to understand science and get excited about it. So today we're gonna talk about drum roll. I mean you know from the title of this video, but protein.

Now please don't think this is just a video for bodybuilders, okay? Trust me, science has evolved. No matter who you are, if you're 15, if you're 95 years old, if you're an athlete, if you never get off your chair because you work at a desk all day, you need to know this.

Protein is not something that that you need to just be thinking about if you're trying to become like Schwarzenegger, okay? It's something that you need for healthy aging, for healthy hormones, so that when you're 80 years old, you can still do a lot of stuff so that your body stays healthy for your metabolism, for your glucose levels, for your energy, for your cravings. This is so important, such an important episode.

Basically, the conclusion is we don't eat enough protein. And there's science to prove this. And eating enough protein will change your life and change the game.

So before we get into it, there's a very important document I made for this episode. It's a PDF and you can download it in the description of this episode. It's basically a one-pager that's going to cover some things we're going to cover in this show, which are how much protein you need, how to calculate that, and then which foods contain which amounts of protein.

So download that and let's get started. You, my friend, who are watching or listening to this, you are made of protein. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's not just your muscles that are made of protein.

Here's a little list of all the things that are made of protein because proteins are just molecules. So, collagen, the collagen in your skin, in your nails, and in your hair, that's a protein. Insulin, the hormone that helps reduce glucose spikes by storing glucose away into your liver, into your muscles, into your fat cells, that's a protein.

Your hair and your nails are made of protein. Important. There's tiny little molecules in your cells that come and fix your DNA when your DNA is damaged.

Those are proteins. And it's important to fix our DNA because DNA damage can lead to consequences such as cancer. Enzymes that hang out in your digestive system and break down foods.

The enzymes are proteins. Antibodies which are part of your immune system and protect you against parasites and viruses. They are proteins.

Way more things than you think are actually proteins in your body. And yes, of course, your muscles are also made of protein. If you remove water, your muscles are about 80% protein.

And there's one really cool thing about proteins. So proteins are like tiny little Legos, microscopic Legos. Your body can assemble them and reassemble them.

So there are 20 different tiny little Legos that proteins are made of and they're called amino acids. So, think of amino acids like the building blocks of proteins, like the little individual Legos that can be assembled in all these different proteins. So, here's the list of the 20 amino acids.

You don't have to remember the names. I just think they're kind of cute names. So, I'm just going to list the 20 names.

You ready? Alanine, arginine, asperagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamic acid, glutamine, glycine, histadine, isolucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, fennylan, proline, serarine, thyanine, tryptophan, tyrrosine, and veene. I mean, if you're looking for like a cute name for your dog or your cat, just saying maybe an amino acid is a good name.

Just saying. That's probably what I'm going to do. So, each of these little Legos and building blocks of proteins, they have different shapes, okay?

They're not all the same. Like individual Lego pieces. Some are smaller, some are bigger, some have a bend, some don't.

So, all of these little building blocks, all these little amino acids are different. And your body is so good at assembling and disassembling these amino acids that it makes millions of proteins per second. Right now, in your body, there are millions of proteins being made by your body assembling amino acids.

I mean, how cool is life? So, here's an two examples of what kind of proteins your body can make? I've taken as examples, basically the biggest protein and the smallest protein.

So, the biggest protein is called titin. It's one of the biggest known proteins and it has 34,000 of these individual Legos, of these individual amino acids. And here's an image of it.

So, you can't even see on this image all of the individual amino acids cuz it's so complex. It's like a monster protein. And then all the way down to something very simple like insulin, which only has 51 amino acids.

So, your body is always making and dissembling proteins. So, where does your body get this protein? Because it needs to make new proteins all the time.

Well, we give our body these very important amino acids by eating them. Simple, functional, it works. We eat proteins in our foods and then our body disassembles them and reassembles them into whatever our body needs.

And you might be familiar with foods that contain protein, but maybe not. So foods that contain proteins are animal foods like fish, like meat, like eggs, like dairy. And in the plant kingdom, it's things like tofu, lentils, peas, pulses.

These are foods that contain proteins that your body very much needs in order to make all the proteins that it needs to be making from within. So anyway, let's focus on muscle because that's what I want to mention today. So, our muscles are often considered a sort of big storage unit for proteins.

So, when your body needs some protein and you're not eating any, it's going to go to your muscles and it's going to break down some of that muscle protein to make the protein that it needs. But here's the thing. You don't actually want your body to be breaking down your muscle because having enough muscle mass is a key factor in aging well, in thriving and not breaking your bones, in being able to pick up groceries when you're 90 years old.

Having a lot of muscle mass is super important for your glucose levels. They help us regulate the glucose that arrives in carbs that we eat. So, it's not a good idea to say, "Oh, hey, my body is just going to break down my muscle mass and use that to make the proteins that it needs to make.

" We need to maintain our muscle mass so it doesn't get degraded by our body. And in fact, we need to be actively growing and replenishing and maintaining our muscle mass because after the age of 30, we lose 10% of our muscle mass per decade. That's a lot of muscle loss.

And if you don't do anything to counteract it, when you're 80 or 90, you're going to have very little muscle mass left. You're not going to be able to be in thriving health. You're going to have a really hard time doing the basic things you want to be doing, like going up some stairs, picking up a kid, opening a jar, like maintaining our muscle mass is no joke.

And if you're young today, you might think like, me, who cares? I'll just deal with that when I'm older. No, no, no, no, no.

Your health in your 80s is dependent on what you do today. So, how do we measure how much muscle mass we [Music] have? Time for a quick break to tell you about the supplements I have developed.

Anti-spike formula. Now, listen. In my years of research, I've understood one key thing.

Keeping our glucose levels steady is the foundation of physical and mental health. No question. And if I could only take one supplement for the rest of my life to help me reduce my glucose spikes and keep my glucose levels steady, it would be antis-pike formula.

I created antis-pike with two really powerful natural plant molecules in it. The first one is malbury leaf extract. And listen to this.

In a review study of 12 randomized clinical trials on over 600 people, scientists found that mold relief extract significantly reduces our glucose spikes after a meal by up to 40%. It also significantly reduces our insulin spike after a meal by up to 40%. And it reduces our fasting glucose levels by 8 milligrams per deciliter after just two months.

So this molecule from malberry leaf reduces the absorption of glucose in our bloodstream. It actually slows down how quickly starches turn to glucose in our bloodstream. Therefore creating a massive reduction in the glucose spike of our meal.

The second main molecule in antis-pike formula is a molecule from lemon called aocitrine. It's the molecule that makes lemons yellow, but also has a really cool effect on our gut. It basically helps our guts produce more GLP-1.

Clinical trials show us that GLP-1 production increases by 17% after just two months of taking it. More GLP-1 means healthier glucose levels. I take two capsules of antis-pike formula every single day before the meal of my day, highest in carbs and sugars.

So, go to anti-pike. com to see all the science behind these ingredients, to see testimonials from thousands of people who've tried it, and to order your own anti-pike formula bottle and try it for [Music] yourself. So, there's a pretty cool tool that's called a DEXA scan.

So, this is the DEXA scan from my own body. Um, here's my body showing you all my bones and stuff. Kind of weird, but there you go.

So in green you have what's called my lean tissue. So that's the organs and the muscles etc. In red you have what's called my fat mass.

So that's where I have fat deposits on my body. And as you can see you know I have a typical pattern of having fat around my hips and my thighs which is something that we see in women. That's where our fat usually gets stored which is different from men by the way.

Men usually store their fat more in their bellies. And after menopause, females switch and a lot of their new fat mass gets deposited into their stomach. Anyway, what we're looking at here is muscle mass.

Muscle mass is key to healthy aging and to be able to be independent when you're older. Second, as we age, our bones get more brittle. And you might have had this experience with somebody you know who's in their 80s.

Once somebody in their 80s breaks a bone, it takes a long time to recover. And it can mean weeks or months in a bed. and then health can deteriorate.

You want to make sure you're not breaking too many bones. And in order to not break too many bones, having muscle mass that protects you when you fall is really key. Then having enough muscle mass means we're less likely to be getting chronic health conditions like Alzheimer's or like diabetes because muscles are an amazing storage units for excess glucose that we eat.

And since today most of us are eating way too much glucose on a daily basis, having a lot of muscle mass allows our body to experience fewer glucose spikes from these carbs that we're eating because our muscles soak up a lot of glucose that arrives into our bloodstream. So muscle mass is important for chronic condition prevention. Essentially, how well you age is a factor of how healthy you've been in your previous decades.

And muscle mass is a key indicator and a key factor in this. And the studies are very very clear everyone. Essentially increasing your muscle strength and exercise fitness will help you live longer and healthier than any combination of drugs you could ever take.

Having high muscle mass and being able to exercise is the best thing you can do for your health and your longevity. I'm going to give you some concrete data here. So there's a study from 2018 that is called associations of muscle mass and strength with all cause mortality among US older adults.

So here they looked at 4,500 people over 10 years. The people were all 50 years old or older. Okay, here's the amazing finding.

Those with low muscle mass were at 40 to 50% greater risk of mortality than controls. Yeah. 40 to 50% greater risk of dying if you have low muscle mass.

And so further analysis in this study actually revealed something quite insightful and interesting that it's not necessarily the overall volume of muscle you have. It's more the strength of your muscles that is important. That's pretty cool to know.

It means it's not enough to just pump some iron in the gym and making big muscles. You have to make sure those muscles are strong and actually capable of doing things. These numbers are huge, okay?

40 to 50% greater risk of death when you have low muscle mass is massive. To compare, I have a very good comparison here that I think you're going to love. So, if we take one of the most popular drugs on planet Earth, it's called metformin.

It's a type 2 diabetes medication. 150 million people are on it today. Guess what it does to reduce the risk of death?

It only reduces the risk of death by 15 to 30%. Whereas having strong muscle mass reduces your risk of death by 40 to 50%. Yeah.

So having good strong muscle mass is twice as effective for helping you live longer and not die than the most prescribed drug on the planet. I'm just going to leave that there. So how do we exercise for stronger muscles?

Well, the first thing that we need to do, which you know makes a lot of sense, is in order to build muscle, we have to first tear it down. Let me explain exactly what happens. So your muscles are about 80% protein outside of water.

So when we lift something heavy, okay, let's take your bicep for example. When you lift a heavy weight to failure and you can't do it anymore, that creates lots of little tears in the proteins in your muscles and then your body's like, "Oh my god, we have to go repair that. " So your body brings all these extra amino acids and goes and repairs that muscle that was broken and makes it stronger than before.

That is how you build up muscle by exerting force, tearing it down, and then your body will build it back up stronger. This is why it is so important to lift weights. And females out there, I know it's not something we're used to doing.

I know we think that lifting weights is just for men. It's not the case. Okay?

Okay. The belief that women should not be lifting weights is so antiquated. It's like stuck in the '9s where we thought all we had to do was just like cardio for hours on a treadmill.

It's so key to lift weights. I lift weights three times a week. And let me tell you, it is impossible to look like a bodybuilder when you're female.

It's very, very difficult. I've been working on my biceps. Can I show you here?

Yeah. I've been working on my biceps here for like years and they're still tiny. Okay.

But but lifting weights will help you build stronger muscles and increase your muscle mass a little bit. Not so much. Maybe a couple pounds of muscle mass per year, if at all.

It's very, very difficult. But in the meantime, you'll get toned. You'll feel strong.

Your back won't hurt. You'll feel good when you walk around. You know, it's just it's a feeling you get from within.

When you have good muscle mass and you feel strong, it increases your confidence in so many different aspects of life, actually. So once you've tear down your muscle, how do you actually build it? So as I explained, your body is going to be looking for amino acids to build back up your muscle.

But if you want to really build your muscle mass, you have to be eating protein. Now, here's the problem. Most of us do not eat enough protein.

The current recommendation in the US is8 gram of protein per kilo of body weight per day. That means that if you're 70 kilos like me, you should be eating 56 grams of protein per day, which is three eggs, one cup of lentils, and half a yogurt. The thing is, this recommendation is not at all adequate anymore, and science is proving it.

This could be enough protein to not die, but it's not enough to maintain your muscle mass, and it is not enough to build your muscle mass. So over the last few years, scientists have realized that actually you should be aiming for two grams of protein per kilo per day or one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. Again, if you click in the description of this episode, you'll see a PDF that will help you calculate how much you need.

So essentially, we need to double and add a little bit more to that protein recommendation. One study that was published in nutrients is called is it time to reconsider the US recommendations for dietary protein and amino acid intake and they showed that in older adults specifically you need to be eating at least 1. 6 grams of protein per kilo of body weight per day just to not lose muscle mass.

You need to be eating twice the recommendation just to not lose muscle mass as you age. So for me, I try to get two grams per kilo of body weight per day, which is kind of the same as one gram per pound of body weight per day. Now, the thing is, once you calculate this, you're going to freak out.

You're going to be like, whoa, that's way more protein than I expected. Yes, 100%. The thing is protein intake is so important because your body cannot make all these amino acids from within.

It needs to get them from the outside to be able to build all the things it needs to build out of them plus maintain and grow muscle mass. So for example, for me, my objective is about 140 grams of protein per day. That's equivalent to 20 eggs or 23 cups of Greek yogurt or seven cups of cooked lentils.

It's hard to get, I know, but of course, if you add some fish and some meat in there, it becomes much, much, much easier, which is what I do. So, again, have a look in the PDF in the description of this episode. I've put together a list of foods and their protein content.

But what you need to know is you're not eating enough protein at every meal. You need to be prioritizing it for your health today, but also for your health as you age. It's so important.

So, when is the best time to eat your protein? Well, interestingly, the best time to eat your protein is throughout the day in three or four sittings because any protein that is not used is going to be excreted through your urine. So, in terms of helping your body assimilate more of the protein that you eat, it's better to have it during every single meal and snack versus all at once and then no more protein at all.

And should you be having protein after you workout? Yes, this is a great time to eat protein because your muscles are looking for amino acids to rebuild themselves. However, you don't have to stress.

There's an old belief that you should be, you know, downing a protein shake within 10 minutes after the end of a workout. Now, we know you actually have way more time. You have hours after your workout to still be able to assimilate protein.

So after a workout, great moment, but you could just wait until you get home and have food. You don't have to down a protein shake just as you're finishing your gym session. But if you want to, you can.

Now, can you eat too much protein? There is an amount of protein that would be bad for your kidneys if you ate all of that every single day. And the upper limit is 3.

7 grams of protein per kilo of body weight per day. Now, that's about 260 gram of protein per day for me, which is 43 eggs per day. So, it's really hard to eat too much protein.

I think that would be close to impossible. So, you really don't have to worry about that unless you're eating just 5 lbs of steak every hour, you're going to be fine. Now, if you don't eat animal protein, you have to know that plant protein sources contain less of a few essential amino acids, methionine, lysine, and tryptophan.

So, it's going to be harder to get those, and you have to be really conscious of making sure you're getting enough of those amino acids, which means that if you're vegan, it's possible to get enough protein. It just takes a lot of work and planning. That's why adding some eggs or some dairy is so beneficial to get your protein intake if you've started from a point where you're vegan.

So potentially consider that so that you get enough protein. Otherwise, you just have to be really conscious and informed and make sure you're eating lots and lots of tofu and lentils and pulses and peas at every meal in the right combinations to be able to get the amino acids that you need. And one last note on protein powder.

So protein powder is a great way to add protein throughout your day. Just want to make sure of the source. So, for example, whey is going to be better and more complete than soy protein.

Also, be careful with the protein powders that are flavored. Any chocolate or vanilla stuff can actually contain some heavy metal traces. So, prefer unsweetened, unflavored protein powders and then add your own flavoring yourself when you're making your shake.

That's the recommendation. So, in conclusion, increasing protein intake is so important if you're an athlete and you're trying to build muscle mass because if you don't eat enough protein, you're not going to build any muscle mass. it's just not going to work.

And second, if you're just a regular person, not an athlete, who wants to live well and not die young and not be frail when you age. So increasing our protein intake should be the number one thing we think about. And the good thing is when you prioritize protein, you also feel much more satiated.

You don't feel as hungry, have fewer cravings. There's a really interesting scientific theory called the protein leverage hypothesis that says that your body will keep you hungry until you've given it enough protein to eat. So, a really easy switch you can do is try to start your day with a proteinrich breakfast, which is what I recommend in my savory breakfast.

So just adding a bunch of protein to your breakfast is a really efficient way to not only keep your glucose levels steady, but also get some protein in the morning to help your body get the signal that hey, there's protein here. We're going to be fine. You can download some free savory breakfast recipes in the description of this episode.

So to recap, get the PDF to calculate how much protein you need and to see all the foods and how much protein is in each of the foods. and also get the savory breakfast recipes started out. Let me know how it goes and I'll see you next time.

Big kiss.