-Who is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon?…00:55

• Muscle-centric medicine
• Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well
  • All things strength training, weightlifting, and muscle as medicine 
• Walkolution treadmill (use code BEN to save $150 off of a $1000 or more purchase)
  • Non-motorized walking treadmill
• Podcast with Karl Muller:
  • Standing Desks, Memory Foam & The Science Of Walking Barefoot In Shoes.

-What is the concept of muscle-centric medicine?…03:33

• The skeletal muscle is the largest organ system in the body
  • People always talk about the skin
• It doesn't have its own form of medicine, like what medications negatively impact skeletal muscle
• The reason Gabrielle created the concept of muscle-centric medicine

-How did Gabrielle become a weightlifter?…05:04

• Her parents are very athletic
  • Dad was captain of the wrestling team
• Got into bodybuilding very early on 
• Gabrielle's lifting video on Instagram
• Spent a year at the University of Limerick looking at exercise physiology and nutritional sciences
• Started training for an obstacle course
• Fitness America

-What is Gabrielle’s strength training routine?…08:09

• Three days a week of something explosive
• Working with a coach
• Trains at Sigma Training
• Always incorporate some functional training
• Pick a target and work on that target for 12 weeks or more
• Hamstring injury while training for a 50-hour event
• Ripped hamstring off the bone — a little over 80% avulsion
• Married to a Navy SEAL

-What is the importance of skeletal muscle mass?…09:56

• Studied muscle in mostly athletes and the elderly
• Uses dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) to measure body composition
  • There is minimal correlation between body muscle mass and strength
  • Requires a 10% change in muscle mass before you have a detectable change
• People believe that it’s all about strength, not mass
  • Studies done with untrained people may be the reason
  • They would get strength more quickly than they get mass
• Another reason is that people haven't been measuring skeletal muscle mass directly
• The incremental changes that can be detected from DEXA are not enough
• D3-creatine dilution — a new validated way to look at body composition, specifically muscle mass
  • Assessment of skeletal muscle mass
  • 90% of your total body creatine pool exists in skeletal muscle
  • Dilution method that uses the assumption of a 24-hour creatine excretion
  • Directly measuring skeletal muscle mass to see a correlation between strength and mass
• It is the loss of skeletal muscle mass rather than the gain of body fat that is much more detrimental to overall health and longevity
• William Evans
• The Streetlight Effect — looking for something only where there is light, colors your perspective on:
  • The importance of hypertrophy training
  • The importance of the amount of mass
• You cannot be healthy without a robust amount of healthy skeletal muscle

-What is the role of skeletal muscle mass?…17:30

• The Goldilocks Zone of muscle mass
• We do not know anyone's optimal skeletal muscle mass
• The most recent study on all-cause mortality related to fat — a body fat percentage greater than 30% is a problem
• Gabrielle created an appendicular lean mass chart for measuring skeletal muscle mass in her book Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well
• Healthy skeletal muscle is the primary site for glucose disposal
• The metabolic sink; carbohydrates must be disposed of somewhere
• A primary site for fatty acid oxidation
• Skeletal muscle is not a very metabolically active tissue compared to other organs
  • Amino acid reservoir

-How do you lose and build skeletal muscle mass?…23:09

• Mortality that occurs with age is typically due to frailty, induced by injuries or illness that keep you bedridden for certain periods and cause you to lose muscle gradually
  • Study 
  • An older individual will lose skeletal muscle mass three times faster
• The Catabolic Crisis Model developed by Dr. Douglas Paddon-Jones
• Up until age 40 or 50, our ability to recover from a skeletal muscle mass perspective is more robust
• As an individual ages
  • They never get up to baseline functioning
  • They lose skeletal muscle mass quickly
• That causes a lot of metabolic problems
  • Increase in blood glucose and insulin
  • Insulin resistance state leads to inflammation
• A sedentary lifestyle — 50% of individuals are not working out
  • Diseases of aging like cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and Alzheimer's disease — these diseases don't begin later on in life, they begin in our 30s
• The changes in skeletal muscle mass also begin in our 30s
• The latest study — at 85 plus, you can build muscle
• Ben encourages young people to start strength training early

-How often should you do resistance training?…28:09

• The idea that you shouldn't do resistance training more than 60 minutes a week
• Dr. Mercola — if you lift more than three times a week, you see an increased all-cause risk of mortality
• According to Ben, that may be true only for extreme weightlifters
• Podcast with Dr. Joe Mercola:
  • Staying Fit With Sunshine & Blood Flow Restriction, The Superiority Of Goose Eggs, The Latest On EMF Protection, Is Vegetable Oil The Root Cause Of Most Modern Diseases? With Dr. Joe Mercola.
• Skeletal muscle mass increases survivability
• Many protocols that show improvements in biomarkers related to metabolic dysfunction, strength, and mobility are all longer than 60 minutes
• 50% of Americans are not training
• Hard work requires discipline
• Bente Pedersen — studied exercise immunology and coined the term “myokines” — cytokines or signaling molecules that are produced and released by muscle cells (myocytes) in response to muscular contractions.
  • The myokine response in resistance training
• Do not take high doses of vitamins C and E or cold soak after a workout

-What effect does building muscle have on the brain?…32:24

• The brain-muscle connection is highly correlated
  • Exercise improves cognitive performance
• Myokines influence Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) release in the brain and are neuro-regenerative
• BDNF is important for neuroplasticity — the brain's ability to adapt and change in response to experiences and learning
• Podcast with Kusha Karvandi:
  • 1 Cheap & Easy Underground Training Method For Growth Hormone Release, 5 Biohacks to Increase Strength in 60 Seconds, 7 Exercises for the Eyes to Radically Enhance Stamina & Speed
• Podcast with John Doolittle and Steven Munatones:
  • The Official KAATSU Episode: Everything You Need To Know About How To Use Blood Flow Restriction For Muscle Gain, Injury Recovery, Testosterone, Growth Hormone & Much More!
• Kaatsu (use code BEN to save 10%)
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey
• Aerobic training is associated more with cognitive improvements than strength training
• The modality seems to have different metabolic adaptations, turning on different genes
• You can't just do endurance if you really want to think about the totality of health
  • Stress the body in different ways — low load, high reps vs. high load, low reps
• Brad Schoenfeld: “Recommendations for muscle strength hypertrophy, local endurance, a reexamination of the repetition continuum”

-How many grams of protein should you take per day?…37:53

• The minimum to prevent deficiencies would be 0.8g per kg (0.47g per lb)
• The evidence supports at least 1.2 to 1.6g per kg
• Double the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) would be a more optimal range
• Recognize that the RDA was based on animal-based foods
• Distribution of protein during the day does not matter in younger people
• Dr. Donald Layman
• Leucine, one of the essential amino acids, is required to stimulate muscle protein synthesis
• If you do not hit a particular leucine threshold
  • The mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) is not stimulated — a protein kinase that plays a crucial role in regulating cell growth, proliferation, and metabolism
  • You do not stimulate this muscle protein synthetic response
• 30g of dietary protein three times a day as a way to manage body composition
  • Did the world a disservice — there's actually no evidence to support this
• The amount of protein per meal is really for the health of skeletal muscle
• Circadian entrainment with food
• The first meal of the day is very important for your anabolic response — the physiological process in which the body builds and repairs tissues, such as muscle tissue, by synthesizing new proteins and increasing cell size

-What is the anabolic upper limit?…47:24

• There's no anabolic upper limit to anabolic response to protein paper
• 100g protein ingestion study
  • There were a lot of challenges with that paper
  • Researchers chose 25g of casein — a type of protein found in milk and dairy products
• The absorption of casein is four times slower
• There would be no difference in anabolic response from 45g to 100g
• One meal a day is not sufficient for the elderly or people in a bad state

-What are the best muscle-building supplements or additions?…50:16

• Kion Aminos
• Protein is 20 different amino acids
• Amino acids are not interchangeable
• Understanding the limiting amino acids
• Three key limiting amino acids
  • Leucine for muscle protein synthesis
  • Methionine creates an integrative stress response (if restricted)
  • Lysine is important for fatty acid oxidation and growth  
• Urolithin A (use code BEN to save 10%)
  • Some people make it, some people don't
  • Pomegranate or walnut
  • Impact on mitochondrial health, function, strength, and endurance
• Creatine is also hugely impactful
  • For cognition and brain function
  • For sleep deprivation — quadruple the dose recommended
  • 2.5-gram portions of creatine throughout the day
• Omega-3 fatty acids
  • Some evidence to support that it might affect women differently
• Vitamin D
• Colostrum
• Gut health and gut muscle access are going to be the next frontier
  • Urolithin A is a postbiotic that directly affects mitochondrial function

-And much more…

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Click here for the full written transcript of this podcast episode.

Resources from this episode:

– Dr. Gabrielle Lyon:

• drgabriellelyon.com
• Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well
• Gabrielle's Instagram Video

– Podcasts:

• Standing Desks, Memory Foam & The Science Of Walking Barefoot In Shoes.
• Staying Fit With Sunshine & Blood Flow Restriction, The Superiority Of Goose Eggs, The Latest On EMF Protection, Is Vegetable Oil The Root Cause Of Most Modern Diseases? With Dr. Joe Mercola.
• 1 Cheap & Easy Underground Training Method For Growth Hormone Release, 5 Biohacks to Increase Strength in 60 Seconds, 7 Exercises for the Eyes to Radically Enhance Stamina & Speed
• The Official KAATSU Episode: Everything You Need To Know About How To Use Blood Flow Restriction For Muscle Gain, Injury Recovery, Testosterone, Growth Hormone & Much More!

– Other Resources:

• Kion Aminos
• Urolithin A (use code BEN to save 10%)
• Kion Creatine
• Kion Omega Fish Oil
• Vitamin D
• Kion Colostrum
• Walkolution Treadmill (use code BEN to save $150 off of a $1000 or more purchase)
• Kaatsu (use code BEN to save 10%)
• Sigma Training
• William Evans
• Dr. Douglas Paddon-Jones
• Bente Pedersen
• Dr. Donald Layman

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Do you have questions, thoughts, or feedback for Gabrielle Lyon or me? Leave your comments below and one of us will reply!