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Coming up next on Passion Struck.
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Growth comes from cultivation, not comfort.
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And oftentimes when we hear stories like how you used to be, you were much more comfortable in the grind because everything else is foreign.
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The calmness, the steadiness, the capacity.
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Each season has positives and negatives.
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At the end of the day, though, I truly believe that the actions
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and the person that we are today will show us the person we are going to be in the future.
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And that it s the actions and the discernment of thought on a daily basis that truly cultivates
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the individual s trajectory.
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And you do have to become deeply intentional.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, Jon R. Miles.
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And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become passion struck.
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Hello everyone, and welcome back to episode 360 of Passion Struck.
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Consistently ranked by Apple as one of the top 10 most popular health podcasts and the number one alternative health podcast.
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Thank you to all of you who come back to the show every single week to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world.
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If you re new to the show, thank you so much for joining us here today.
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or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or family member, we now have Episode Starter Packs, which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics to give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Either go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs or Spotify to get started.
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In case you missed my interviews last week, I had two great ones.
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The first featured Martinus Evans, a man whose life is a testament to the power of intentionality.
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Martinus has embarked on a mission to make running a sport for everyone, which is fueled by his unwavering commitment to inclusivity and to the empowerment of others.
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He is the author of The Slow AF Run Club, the ultimate guide for anyone who wants to run.
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I also interviewed Ivo Brugmans,
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who s a renowned philosopher, management consultant, and author of the groundbreaking book, Paradoxical Leadership.
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Through his practical methodology and extensive toolkit, Ivo unveils how to transform divisive dilemmas into creative solutions and paralyzing polarization into constructive dialogue.
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And if you like either of those episodes or today s, we would so appreciate you giving it a five-star rating and review.
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They bring
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so many more people into the PassionStruck community where we can help bring hope, meaning, and how to live an intentional life to so many people.
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And I also know we and our guests love to hear your feedback.
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Today, we have a remarkable guest who s here to revolutionize the way we think about our health and well-being.
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After years of observing patients and recognizing a common thread among them, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon made a groundbreaking discovery.
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It wasn t just about having less fat.
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It was about having more muscle.
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Dr. Lyon realized that muscle, often underestimated, plays a pivotal role in determining our overall health and aging trajectory.
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It s our body s largest endocrine organ, holding the key to our health and aging trajectory.
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Dr. Lyon s groundbreaking research and evidence-based approach have revolutionized the way we think about muscle and its impact on our lives.
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Today, she brings her expertise to the show, shedding light on how to optimize muscle health, regardless of our age or health background.
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Dr. Lyon s new book, Forever Strong, a new science-based strategy for aging well, provides a blueprint for rebooting your metabolism, building strength, and extending your life.
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We ll delve into topics like why scientific research has overlooked muscle health, the significance of our three health optimization tracks, the misconceptions about nutrition, and the revolutionary concept of muscle-centric medicine.
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Discover how increasing your muscle can help prevent diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer.
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Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is a board-certified family medicine physician, and her expertise in protein types and levels for health performance, aging, and disease prevention is truly exceptional.
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So sit back, relax, and get ready to embark on a journey to becoming forever strong.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am so excited and honored today to have the one and only Dr. Gabrielle Lyon.
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Welcome, Gabrielle.
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Hi, John.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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It s truly my privilege.
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Well, I ve been a long-term fan of your podcast.
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So when I got the reach out that you wanted to be on the show, it wasn t even a hesitation.
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I just had to get you on, especially to help support your new book, Forever Strong, which comes out the day this podcast will air.
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So congratulations on that.
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Thank you.
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As writing a book is truly a labor of love, but when you have something important to say that is going to serve the world, you have a responsibility to do that.
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Well, absolutely.
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And it definitely is a labor of love.
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And I thought when I wrote the book, that was going to be the easy part.
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And I ve realized it is just the beginning of a whole nother chapter.
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So I m sure you ve experienced that yourself.
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Yes, absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Well, Gabrielle, as an author, educator and practitioner, what drives your passion for sharing your expertise and helping people all around the world to optimize their health?
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Well, I love this question because ultimately medicine is the modality that I use to get the best out of people.
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And that s what I really want to see for people.
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I want to see them as the best version of themselves.
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I want to see them not distracted by health information.
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I want them to be able to execute in a way where health is second nature.
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It s really what drives me is I know what the end of life looks like as a trained geriatrician, the end of life, and you know,
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how much the middle of life and early life is worth fighting for so that the end result doesn t contain regret and that the end result is really a trajectory of the choices that you ve made and the impact and the influence that you ve had on other people s lives in a positive manner.
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Well, thank you for sharing that.
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And I know I wouldn t be where I am today if it wasn t for mentors along the way.
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Were there any mentors along your journey who played a significant role in your career path and your focus on where you are now today?
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Absolutely.
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In fact, my book Forever Strong is dedicated to my mentor of over two decades, Dr. Donald Lehman.
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And he is one of the foremost protein researchers in the world.
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And I was lucky enough to stumble into his lab and into his class as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, studying human nutrition, vitamin mineral metabolism.
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And Don has done some of the very pivotal work
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of the information that we essentially take for granted today, this idea of protein distribution and how much protein we need for the health of skeletal muscle.
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Some pivotal discoveries actually came out of his lab, which is amazing to be able to interface with a giant who is so humble and has so much scientific integrity.
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He changed the trajectory of my life and the way that I think.
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And this book is, quite frankly, dedicated to him.
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Well, I was going to ask you what s the inspiration for writing Forever Strong, but you just answered it.
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Yeah.
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And I will tell you what ended up happening is social media has really taken off.
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And now that is the majority of where people are getting their health information.
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And having been a physician, I graduated medical school in 2006.
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I ve seen a lot of patients.
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I ve seen thousands of patients.
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And as a physician, I would say that we re not really keen on social media.
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It s not what we re trained to do.
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And what happens is all of a sudden the world begins to interface in a different way, where health information is coming from influencers or people that are maybe taking information and translating it in a way that s not necessarily accurate.
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And there was a moment where I realized that if I don t step up to say something and put this in a book, that the way in which people will age will have a tremendously negative impact on our world.
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And that s ultimately why I wrote the book, because I think that with good scientific information and a strong mental framework that can be deployed, individuals can take health and wellness into their own hands and really begin to ask the right questions
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so that they are strong and that they are capable.
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John, I ve never heard someone say, gosh, I just regret being physically strong.
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I regret being mentally strong.
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I ve never heard that.
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And we now live in a space where there s a lot of distraction.
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And what I see with distraction is that it takes people away from being able to execute
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something that allows for them to take care of themselves wherever they are, whether they are just graduating college, embarking on a new career path, whether they are a father or a brother or a family member or a CEO or an athlete, whatever it is that they are, however they show up in life, the common denominator for how far they will go is based on, are you ready for this?
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Based on health.
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I have the privilege of taking some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world and some incredibly elite war fighters.
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That s part of what our practice does.
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And the common denominator is their health and wellness.
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And that is powerful.
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I think it s extremely powerful.
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And I remember about a year ago, I was interviewing Katie Milkman.
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I m not sure if you re familiar with Katie, but she is a professor at Wharton and specializes in behavior science.
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And I asked her, why did you get into this whole study of behavior science?
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She said it was because as she was an undergraduate, she happened to see a study that showed that 60% of adults in the United States will have two chronic conditions by the time that they re in their late 50s, early 60s, and they end up spending 20 to 30% of their life in a debilitated state.
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And for her, it just brought up this whole passion inside of her to start doing something about it.
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And one of the things I have
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really come to the conclusion of is our health is really determined by our underlying behaviors.
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There s a huge link to it and I m sure as you were treating patients like you just mentioned from entrepreneurs to military veterans like myself to others that these choices that we make in our daily life have to be something that comes up in your discussion with them.
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It is.
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And in fact, I d love to tell you a story.
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I want to tell you a story about the time that this really took hold for me.
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And again, I ve seen thousands of patients and I used to have a practice on fifth Avenue and right across from the park.
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It was very beautiful.
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And one day a military operator seal of 20 years came into my office and his name was Brian.
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Brian was a breacher.
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I don t, what part of the military were you and my friend?
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Navy.
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Navy, okay.
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He was a Navy SEAL for 20 years, breacher, muscle of the teams, 265 pound farm guy, right?
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Just this big farm boy, big Texan.
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And he d been, again, multiple war deployments to some of the most dangerous places on earth.
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and he d never been injured.
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He came home, was riding on his motorcycle, going five miles an hour, and Brian was completely taken out by a 17-year-old girl texting and driving.
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Brian lost his leg, and he was sitting in my office, and you don t know this about me, but I m 5 1 , my husband is a SEAL, so I m thinking, man, I m telling this whole narrative story in my head, like,
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Brian s life is never going to be the same.
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Here he was, this big alpha dude, and now he s lost his leg and his career is over.
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His life is over.
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So he s sitting in my office and I lean in and I go, Brian, how are you doing?
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And he looked at me like I just asked him if there was a purple elephant flying outside of the window and could he get me a cup of coffee?
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He looked at me totally confused.
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I said, Doc, well, I just told you.
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I m tired, I m having some phantom limb pain, just not feeling as robust as I normally do.
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That answer wasn t good enough for me.
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So I asked him again, and this time I leaned even closer.
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I m like, Brian, no, no, no, tell me, how are you really doing?
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And then I launch into my narrative about how he s really doing.
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I said, Brian, here you are, you lost your leg, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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How are you ever gonna do X, Y, and Z, and now et cetera, et cetera.
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And he looked at me and he goes, in total honest to God curiosity and confusion, Doc, what are you talking about?
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That was like six months ago.
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It was in that moment that I realized.
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There is a difference between being an asset versus being a liability in the way you show up in your own life and the way that you show up in other people s lives.
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And you do not have to be a Navy SEAL to embody certain characteristics and attributes to execute in a way that allows you not to be shackled to the past.
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Whereas most of the patients that are unsuccessful that I ve seen
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are still talking about something or thinking about something that happened six years ago.
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Here Brian is, and granted, he s a SEAL, so he s strong and capable and cultivated.
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But what was so shocking is that I started to think about all the really successful patients, and it doesn t even need to be financial success.
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That s not what I m talking about.
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The patients that were thriving physically, mentally, within their lives, and they had very common characteristics.
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And one, there s a handful.
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If I have a moment, I would love to share them with you.
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One framework was that they didn t have a narrative.
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There was no inner dialogue.
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There wasn t a monologue.
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It was purely a neutral mind.
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And I m sure that took time to develop, as I hear from many of my patients.
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And again, we all have narratives, or at least many of us.
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I swear, I don t think my husband does, but many of us have narratives.
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And these narratives, quite frankly, are very uninteresting.
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And everybody has a handful of them.
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Just because the brain is doing what the brain does and pumping out thoughts, it doesn t mean that they have to be dealt with.
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It doesn t mean they have to be believed.
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It s like when the heart beats, you don t think about what the heart is doing.
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It s just that your heart is beating.
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The same thing goes for the brain.
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And those that are able to go through moments of crisis and moments of change with a very neutral mind are incredibly successful.
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The other very fascinating attribute or characteristic that I see all the time is a worthiness, a worthiness temperature.
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And that s just for lack of a better way of phrasing it.
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People will only go so far in their health to the level that they feel worthy of achieving and worthy of having.
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There is this element of self-sabotage that I see.
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But once you can break through the ceiling of truly and deeply feeling worthy of the physical body, of the physical health that an individual desires, the rest is golden.
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It s pretty profound.
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It is extremely profound.
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I thought you were going to take that story in a completely different direction because I know a lot of people who were breachers and a lot of them over time, because of the repetitive nature of the concussions that they experience, have a lot of issues with post-traumatic brain injury syndrome, etc.
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So that s where I thought you were going with it.
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But that was a truly amazing story.
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You re absolutely right.
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I remember speaking of traumatic brain injury when I was in the military.
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I did a number of deployments.
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I came out of that experience with a number of brain injuries myself.
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And I remember not having the best health for a while and really struggling to get answers for what was causing it.
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And it was interesting because
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When I started to expose myself to more operators, 99% of the people I talked to, we were all experiencing the same symptoms across the board, which was pretty amazing to me that so many of those things came up.
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And I decided to take charge of my health, take charge of my life, take charge that I wanted to get back to having the cognition that I had before the injuries.
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And I intentionally went on the path to do it.
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I m thankful to say through some treatments from the Warrior Angels Foundation, which is based in Houston, I ve been able to get back to where I was before.
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But I know so many people struggle with things like this in their lives.
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Yes, I would actually love to connect with that group.
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I m not sure if you know this, but I sit on the medical board for SEAL Future Foundation and Hunter 7, which is early cancer detection.
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And again, I had mentioned that my husband was a SEAL.
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He s actually in SEAL Team 10 for 10 years.
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He s now a surgeon in his surgical residency.
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And what I will tell you is absolutely what you re saying is true and a portion of our practice currently, our current practice is dedicated to elite operators for exactly that reason.
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We do see a lot of head injuries and we do see a lot of hormonal imbalances.
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a lot of gastrointestinal issues.
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We send many of these guys to parasitology, all of this being said, what I appreciate what you had mentioned is that you took matters into your own hands and you executed and you identified where potential weakness was.
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That leads me to another characteristic of some of the most successful patients that I have is that it s not so much that they are focused on their strengths.
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It s that they are all deeply aware of their weaknesses.
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Obviously, a head injury is not a weakness per se.
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However, a head injury will have you operate if untreated in a way that generates weaknesses, whether it s in cognition, whether it s in mood, whether it s in sleep, whether it s in subsequent hormonal issues.
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And the most successful patients are all deeply aware of their personal weaknesses, which goes counterintuitive to much of the discussion today, which much of the discussion today is focus on your strengths.
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Ignore your weaknesses and focus on your strengths.
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But for example, if someone listening doesn t realize that when they get stressed, they will reach for a beer.
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That beer becomes two beers.
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That beer becomes three beers.
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Then that beer becomes a whole host of distractions of not getting work done, of not connecting with a family member, of not moving the needle forward for the dreams and ambitions that the person has set in place for themselves.
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Being aware of weaknesses is the fastest way to course correct any health and wellness goal.
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I ll give you an example, another example.
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Individuals that are trying to lose weight or optimize body composition.
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The human animal is incredibly predictable.
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It is so predictable that I can tell you an archetype of a high performer.
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Late nights, and I m sure your listener is thinking, okay, well, is this going to be me?
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Am I going to raise my hand?
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late nights, and John, I bet you are guilty of this, late nights, early mornings, minimal sleep, lots of obligations and tasks for execution, frequent travel, put any health related tasks off to the back burner.
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High stress, crash and burn, and then do it all again.
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There is this ebb and flow as people go through life.
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And each time, each cycle, each season, they are shocked by the underpinnings that take away their health and wellness.
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I m here to tell you that you are predictable and that when you account for these predictable behaviors, you can put things and actions in place to circumvent that.
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I have to tell you, Gabrielle, when I was a senior executive for many years at Lowe s and Dell, I did just that.
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I was burning the candle on both ends and I was just in this chronic state of living in stress and it took a toll on everything.
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relationships, my ability to function, my health, my mental health, my emotional health.
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And what I realized coming out of that, and I had a great career coach who took me under his wings, was I was living on a stool that had one support and it was the constant grind.
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And what I needed was a stool that had multiple supports that were anchored in physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, et cetera.
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And when I made that switch and became intentional about those other aspects of my life, everything started to change.
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And it s so important and I know so many people are just like I was.
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It s one of the reasons why I started this whole podcast is because so many people are burned out.
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They re emotionally numb.
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They feel hopeless in their situations.
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And I think it s important that you and I are both telling them that s a choice and you also have the choice that you can change.
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And when you do, life is so much better on the other side of that when you just, no matter how hard it may seem at that moment, come out of that situation you re in and start taking those actions to change.
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Absolutely.
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Growth comes from cultivation, not comfort.
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And oftentimes when we hear stories like that, like how you used to be, you were much more comfortable in the grind because everything else is foreign.
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The calmness, the steadiness, the capacity.
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In fact, I even find myself now as I m going into this book launch, when I have a moment where there s nothing for me to be doing, it s odd.
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It s weird.
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And I have to catch myself because each season has positives and negatives.
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At the end of the day, though, I truly believe that the actions and the person that we are today will show us the person we are going to be in the future.
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And that it s the actions and the discernment of thought on a daily basis
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that truly cultivates the individual s trajectory.
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And you do have to become deeply intentional, right?
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So I wrote this book, Forever Strong.
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And this book also, as much as it is a nutrition book, as much as it is a book that reframes our current thinking about health and wellness, it is also a book that is about the psychology of mental optimization.
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There are three major parts to this book.
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It is the nutrition aspect.
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It is the physical aspect.
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And it is the mental framework for execution and excellence, because I truly believe that it s never too late to be forever strong.
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And being strong is an action.
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And being strong is an action that you take daily.
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And the things that impede you from physical strength and emotional strength are obvious.
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They re expected, and they are, quite frankly and surprisingly, easy to circumvent.
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Well, let s start unpacking all of that.
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So let s start out with, in the book, you emphasize that muscle health is our metabolic currency.
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Why is muscle the most important organ in our body?
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Before I tell you why muscle is the most important organ in the body, I have to provide the landscape through which we view muscle.
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And John, as a guy who has been deployed with team members, the guys in the teams and other military and also working as a high-level executive, you know that there s one thing guys care about, no offense, but it s good hair and good testosterone and looking jacked.
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That arguably is where muscle
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goes.
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When people think about skeletal muscle, they think about the big brawny dudes being jacked and tan, being in the weight room, throwing around weights.
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Fair?
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Is that fair to say?
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Yeah, I would think that s a normal conclusion that you come to.
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John, you said that very delicately.
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I would say that oftentimes when we think about muscle, that s where the mind goes.
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We think about it from a mechanical, biomechanical perspective.
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We think about it from health and performance perspective.
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We might even think about it from a body composition perspective.
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Our current health landscape talks all about this obesity epidemic talks.
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It s been trying to treat an obesity epidemic for the last 50 years.
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We ve only gotten sicker.
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We ve only gotten more overweight.
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We ve been trying to fix heart disease.
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We ve been trying to fix diabetes.
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The list goes on.
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If you look at the CDC, you ll see the top causes of morbidity.
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You will see heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, respiratory disease, diabetes, Alzheimer s.
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There is a metabolic underpinning to all of these things, part of which these things are symptoms of unhealthy skeletal muscle.
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Many of the diseases that we are trying to avoid that we think about as normal parts of aging are actually issues of skeletal muscle that begin decades earlier.
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And in fact, you can see there was a pivotal paper that came out of Yale, and it looked at 18-year-old healthy, quote, healthy, sedentary college students
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that showed significant signs of skeletal muscle insulin resistance that began before there were any obvious signs of obesity.
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If we care about optimizing our performance and showing up in the way that we want to,
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then we must understand at the pinnacle of health is skeletal muscle.
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And muscle is so much more than locomotion and performance and power output and strength.
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While it s all of these things, it is the organ of longevity.
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And I will even say that skeletal muscle has multiple components that are fascinating.
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We talked about the obvious, which is being jacked and tanned.
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The other not so obvious aspect about skeletal muscle is that it is an endocrine organ.
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When you contract, skeletal muscle releases myokines.
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Myokines are molecules that go throughout the body that interface with the brain and help with brain neurogenesis through BDNF, helps with bone development,
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skeletal muscle release something called interleukin-6, which is probably the most famous myokine.
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We ve all heard about interleukin-6, or I think many of your listeners likely have, and interleukin-6 is a cytokine when it is released from cells of the immune system.
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We ve heard about cytokine storms in
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increasing inflammation, increasing immune response.
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When contracting skeletal muscle through exercise releases interleukin-6, it helps damper the immune response, the inflammatory response in the body.
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This is incredible because skeletal muscle, we have voluntary control over.
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Skeletal muscle makes up 40% of our body.
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Another fascinating component to skeletal muscle is the way
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that contracting skeletal muscle releases glutamine.
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Glutamine is a semi-essential amino acid, which glutamine is a energy source and provides fuel for cells of the immune system.
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We ve always heard that exercise is good for the immune system.
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Well, specifically how?
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Exercise is specifically good for the immune system because of the influence of contracting skeletal muscle and what skeletal muscle releases and how it provides full body homeostasis.
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It s incredible.
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Other aspects of skeletal muscle, I m sure we re going to talk about skeletal muscle is a nutrient sensing organ system.
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Skeletal muscle senses the quality of the diet.
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Skeletal muscle is also your body armor.
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If you fall,
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If you get injured, your body requires these amino acids, it will pull from skeletal muscle.
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And lastly, and most second famously, it is your metabolic sink.
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And that means that skeletal muscle is the site for glucose disposal, both during exercise and at rest.
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Skeletal muscle, when you eat a meal of carbohydrates, skeletal muscle is the primary site where you put it.
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So you do need to have healthy skeletal muscle.
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So you have a place to store glucose.
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We know that when individuals lose healthy skeletal muscle, we see an increase in blood glucose, increase in insulin, and of course, over time, the subsequent diseases that develop often with this are diseases that could land an individual on the CDC s top 10 list.
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Gabriel, first, I want to go back and tell you why I hesitated.
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I hesitated because I kept thinking of the SEAL community.
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And while there are a lot of people who are
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Like Marcus or Morgan Luttrell or Marcus Capone or some of the other well-known SEALs that people are familiar with, the vast majority I saw were what you would think of were normal built human beings.
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Look at a Sean Ryan or many of my friends, Admiral Olsen is a great example of someone who on the outside you probably wouldn t have thought was a SEAL.
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But sometimes I think looks are deceiving in the muscular strength and mental capacity that you have as an individual.
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And what always intrigued me was you can be big, but that s not going to help you on a long duration mission where you need to be agile.
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and potentially have to rocket or run or do something else to keep your stamina up.
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So I just view muscular strength in many different ways.
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But yes, to your point, I think most people think about it as this muscular person they see in the gym, who s all tan, and everything, but that doesn t necessarily equate to someone being strong.
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This is true.
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And you ve had the privilege to work and know individuals that their body, they are the human weapon, their brain, their bodies.
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These guys, again, are fit and agile and have incredible muscular endurance as well as just mental fortitude.
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But yes, I would say that they are the exception to the rule.
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But I will also say that the majority of them
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at least while they are active duty, all recognize, even if they don t recognize it consciously, they all recognize the importance of having healthy skeletal muscle.
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They all recognize the importance of being strong, being prepared for life.
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And I think that s where some of the confusion in health and wellness comes in,
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I had no idea that fitness was so controversial.
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Did you know that, that people really argue about the best modalities for training, for aging and strength?
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Again, this was new to me.
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I knew that people argued about nutrition, but I had no idea that people argued about strength training and these other modalities.
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I think that we can all, so you already know this.
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You re one step ahead of me, friend.
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You ve been in the game longer.
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I have a podcast that s only a year old.
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The one thing that we can all agree upon is that we have seen individuals throughout life as they age, lose muscle mass and strength.
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It may not be ourselves.
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We might not be there, but we can all appreciate individuals that we ve seen, whether it s our parents or our grandparents.
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Could we agree on that, that we all have seen what aging does if left unchecked?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And with that, when we are midlife and we understand that you earn that strength every day, you had mentioned metabolic currency.
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Muscle is totally currency.
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Muscle is currency that is unusual because it can t be bought, can t be sold, can t be traded for, can t be bargained for.
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Skeletal muscle is currency that has to be earned.
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currency that has to be earned, and the way in which you earn that is a process of becoming a different kind of person, a more resilient person, a more sturdy person, a more disciplined person.
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And while we talk about the mechanical aspects of skeletal muscle, and that yes, strength and size don t necessarily go hand in hand,
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However, that health of that tissue and the capacity of that tissue requires effort, purposeful effort over time.
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And when we fail to recognize that importance, we take for granted that the process of aging, there s a process of aging called sarcopenia, potentially.
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It was recently given a ICD-9 code or ICD-10, which is international classification of disease.
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It actually was only recognized in 2016 as something that was diagnosed and diagnosable, which is shocking.
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So I suppose all of this to say that skeletal muscle health is something that is a non-negotiable
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And by focusing on what we have to gain through the actions that we take, whether it s muscular endurance, whether it s hypertrophy training, whether it s strength training, the person that we become, and when we focus on what we have to gain versus what we have to lose, it allows individuals to become much more empowered in their own health and wellness journey.
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Because it s not about losing fat.
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It really is about addressing the health of skeletal muscle over time.
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said so well.
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And I remember watching my grandparents on my maternal side, and every single morning they would get up, both of them, and do their morning exercises.
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And I remember my grandfather especially was always in great shape for his age, and both of them lived to be in their 90s.
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But my parents also do a good job.
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They make sure that four to five times a week they re going to the Y,
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and getting the exercise in.
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And I think it s so important as we age to have this fitness routine.
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And I m going to get to protein intake here in a second, but I wanted to just stick to exercise and training here for a second.
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To me, it s fascinating that exercising can impact muscle at the cellular level, specifically by improving mitochondria, which people probably don t realize.
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Can you elaborate on that relationship between muscle health and mitochondria function?
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Certainly.
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The majority of our mitochondria are housed in our skeletal muscle.
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And that s largely, again, because skeletal muscle makes up 40% of our body weight.
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When we think about skeletal muscle, and number one, we do have to think about mitochondria.
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So we should, I think, lay out a little bit about mitochondrial function.
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We ve all heard generically that it is the powerhouse of the cell.
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Well, what does that actually mean?
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Mitochondria is the place for ATP generation.
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It is the site that we really do generate energy within ourselves.
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We have to think about fatty acid oxidation within our tissue, as well as glucose utilization.
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When we age, mitochondria changes.
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It is one of the hallmarks.
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There s a great paper that covers the hallmarks of aging.
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Mitochondria, aging, the displacement, the degradation, the issues with mitochondria are considered a hallmark of aging.
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which means healthy mitochondria very easily translates to greater energy.
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The more healthy mitochondria you have, the better energy that you have.
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Typically, mitochondria content is related to the volume of training.
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And when we think about the volume of training, that could be a lot of cardiovascular activity, typically
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When you think about the fibers, you think about individuals that are doing cardiovascular activity versus doing something like lifting weights doesn t necessarily move the needle for mitochondria as much as some kind of cardiovascular or higher volume endurance training.
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The question then becomes, how do we think about mitochondrial health over time and both become important?
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So the aspect of maintaining mitochondrial health through some type of cardiovascular activity, as well as maintaining some type of other skeletal muscle health through hypertrophy training.
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And I think that s the best way to think about it.
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I will also say that when you think about skeletal muscle mitochondria, and there s a lot of information about exercise and skeletal muscle health, where I think it s very fascinating that we turn our attention is there is a gut muscle access.
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And that s probably something that I think a lot of the listeners may have not heard about.
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We think about gut health as separate to muscle health, but there s something very interesting when it relates to... I ll give you an example.
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There is a elagitannin from a pomegranate walnut.
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It s what we call a postbiotic.
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And this elagitannin is transformed in the gut.
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It s transformed in the gut to something called urolithin A.
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And urolithin A is a compound that maybe 30% of humans actually can generate.
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And what urolithin A has been shown to do in many scientific articles, randomized controlled trials, it actually improves the cellular turnover of the mitochondria.
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It improves mitophagy.
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It improves the clearing out of old mitochondria and the generation of new mitochondria.
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all while leveraging something that came from the gut.
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It s a postbiotic.
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And I just think that s very fascinating because you can move the needle for mitochondria exercises, arguably the number one.
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But I would also say that the number two thing is what we eat and how we think about nutrition plays a role in our mitochondrial health.
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So hopefully that is an answer to your question that may be a little different.
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No, I love it because a couple of things that I incorporate into my daily life, because to me, I can tell when my mitochondria health is out of whack because everything else feels out of whack.
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It impacts my sleep, it impacts my energy levels, my cognition levels.
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So I do a lot of work around calorie-restricted diets.
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I do intermittent fasting pretty much every single day.
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And then part of the program I m on is using supplements like urolithin A as part of my regimen.
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And Kara Fitzgerald, if you know her, gave me a whole bunch of things as well that I do.
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So I take beets and turmeric and other anti-inflammatories.
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I wanted to mention skeletal muscle.
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We think about it as red muscle.
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That would be type 1 fibers, and then type 2A, type 2X, which would be white.
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And type 1 fibers are really the fibers that we think about when it comes to mitochondrial health.
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And that s the volume of cardio and the mitochondrial content, and then the capacity of glucose and fat oxidation.
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Now, I m going to ask you a question.
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When you talk about supplementation, urolithin A is huge.
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My next question to you is, do you use ketone esters for a rapid fuel source for mitochondria?
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I have experimented with it and sometimes I find that even though it gives me a boost for a little bit, I get a major letdown after I use them.
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And it s perhaps because I m using them in the wrong way.
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But it s difficult because since I intermittent fast and before I used to do this, I used to do the ketone supplementation before I would work out.
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But now I don t use it in that way or I m worried if I would use it, it would break my fast most likely.
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Okay.
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So the last couple of years I haven t been using it as much, but for a while there I was experimenting with that a lot.
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Yeah, I think it s an important point to mention, especially when it comes to muscle health.
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When I think about muscle health, I think about it again, the mitochondria, and then I think about mitochondria function as one, and I relate it to if I were in to visualize this.
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In my head, I think about type 1 fibers, mitochondrial health, and then I think about ways to influence that through the volume of training, and then what fuel sources.
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And then in the other aspect of muscle health, I think about type 2 fibers, I think about white fibers, I think about glycogen, protein myofibrils, and then the storage component.
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So I think about mitochondria as this energy, and then I think about glycogen as the storage capacity.
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Both of which are trained differently and separately.
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Both of which, for example, have different targeted supplements.
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We talked about what you would do for mitochondrial health and then what you would do for muscular health that might be like creatine for short bursts of activity, less than 10 seconds.
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something like that.
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So I do think that it s important that we train with a specific purpose so that we know what our target is.
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And by the way, again, as individuals age, like you mentioned, there is this natural decline in mitochondria.
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It s one of the hallmarks of aging, this decline in mitochondrial function with reduced exercise capacity that is very well documented in the literature.
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No, it absolutely is.
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And it s one of the reasons I try to get in at least three days a week.
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I try to do heavy cardio, typically spin classes, specifically to help my metabolism boost and that mitochondria function.
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I love it.
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So are you on the Peloton?
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We could definitely Peloton together.
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We ve got one upstairs.
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Absolutely.
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They keep teasing me.
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I thought I was going to have Alex Toussaint on the show and they tease me and tease me and then yank them at the last minute.
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So one of these days I ll get some of my favorite Peloton instructors on the show.
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Oh, I love it.
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That would be so fun.
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You ll have to let me know.
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Another important point about mitochondria is I do believe that the change in mitochondrial health, again, anecdotally, you re saying that s what you feel.
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I would say that I have seen that, that there is an increase in fatigue associated with lack of or mitochondrial health.
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Again, I know that these are somewhat nebulous terms because no one is staining our mitochondria, but based on the literature, there is this decline in efficiency that we know about.
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and the capacity for ATP generation.
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And then what does that mean for us as we age?
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Well, number one, if skeletal muscle houses mitochondria and there is a change in fibers as we age and a loss of skeletal muscle, then it stands to reason as we lose skeletal muscle, we lose mitochondria.
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And we can see that in our blood work.
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We can see that through elevated levels of blood sugar, elevated levels of insulin, elevated levels of triglycerides.
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Again, a very important component to aging.
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And I also think it s one that potentially doesn t have to happen.
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We don t have a ton of data on what it looks like for highly active, more mature individuals over time, which, again, I m hoping that s what we ll see as individuals become forever strong, because it s totally plausible.
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Thank you for sharing that.
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And Gabriel, you did an excellent interview with Dr. Mark Hyman.
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I loved it.
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I was researching it and a term came up that I was not familiar with called bioenergetics.
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And I understand it s an emerging element of this whole muscle health paradigm.
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Can you explain what it is and why it matters?
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I think that when you re referring to, do you mean bioenergetic nutrition?
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So bioenergetics is really by definition means the flow of energies in a biological system.
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In humans, we think about that as the conversion of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats into usable energy.
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So I m assuming that s what you re referring to potentially.
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There s a chemistry element of it as I was reading on it, but there s also a nutritional component of it as well.
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And I was more focusing on the nutritional component.
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Well, I think it s important to understand that when you think about bioenergetics, what we re really talking about is how are we utilizing substrates.
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That s the way when I think about nutrition, bioenergetics, I think about how is it that we are using substrates so that we can prevent things like metabolic syndrome, a cluster of pathological conditions that we would think raise the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes.
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And how do we think about establishing healthy dietary patterns?
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And quite frankly, what is a healthy diet?
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That is a question that everybody has.
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Is a healthy diet characterized by the appropriate consumption of
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very specific proportions of macronutrients of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, I would say that is and that supports energetic and physiological functions with sufficient micronutrients.
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So when I think of bioenergetics, I think about how all of these molecules play
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play into a role as well as the macronutrient, but also the non-nutrient compounds.
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From my perspective, the most important of which is dietary protein.
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Dietary protein is something that we talk about generically as one thing, but dietary protein is based on 20 different amino acids.
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all of which do very different things.
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And each one of those 20 different amino acids have various roles in the body above and beyond what we would say as muscle protein synthesis.
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There are nine of which are essential.
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And out of the nine amino acids that are essential, I can just give you an example.
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When you think about again, if we are agreeing on the term of bioenergetics, this kind of interface between how the body uses protein, carbohydrates and fats,
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as well as this non-nutritive component and how everything flows together and how it is utilized.
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When we think about protein, we have to think about each as an individual nutrient and what does each one of those amino acids do.
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And it s a little bit outside the scope of the conversation, but I d love to highlight a few.
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When we think about amino acids as individual nutrients, we have to think about, let s just take some of the common ones.
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And by the way, when you pick up a label, I ll use protein.
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We can agree on that.
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I ll use protein.
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We don t see the 20 different amino acids in protein.
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And for example, tryptophan is an amino acid, which is a precursor for serotonin.
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Leucine, my favorite amino acid, is one of the branch chain amino acids, which you must ingest from the diet and is important, critical,
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for muscle health.
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It stimulates mTOR, which then goes on to stimulate muscle protein synthesis by a whole cascade of events that happen.
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Phenylalanine is a precursor for dopamine production.
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Threonine is a precursor.
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I know that you re very interested in health and wellness.
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75% of threonine is a precursor for mucin production in the gut.
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So when we eat for muscle health, then we have to understand that all these other components fall into place.
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And then if we take it one step further, if we move beyond the generic term of protein, we then think about food as a food matrix.
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And within the food matrix, for example, like beef, we think about the highly bioavailable form of protein, but we also think about these low molecular weight molecules like taurine, which can be important for eyesight and important for aging.
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We also think about carnitine or fatty acid oxidation.
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We think about
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glutathione, we think about creatine, and serine, lots of low molecular weight molecules that ride along with the food that we eat.
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And that all plays a role as it relates to overall health and wellness.
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And dietary protein is essential.
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You can make all the carbohydrates that you need.
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You only need a very small amount of fat, but because of the turnover of dietary protein, I m sorry, because of the turnover of protein in general,
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in the body, you might turn over 250 to 300 plus grams of protein a day, you re not going to ingest all of that.
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And that is why dietary protein becomes so critical.
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Because again, as you eat for muscle health, all subsequent things fall into place.
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And maybe a follow on question to that would be, what types of food do you recommend that are rich in clean proteins and are particularly beneficial if you re looking to optimize muscle health and many of mitochondria and many of the things that we ve been discussing about?
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You and I both know this is a hot topic, right?
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Nothing potentially is more controversial than nutrition.
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Nutrition is up there with politics and religion.
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And by the way, I think it s important that we highlight just that one statement, that when we re talking about nutrition, I appreciate that everybody has very different views and reasons for eating.
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However, when we address nutrition, I think it s really important that we be clear, are we just talking about some of the empirical data?
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Are we talking about numbers?
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And that would be my preference.
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I will talk about protein as high quality protein versus low quality protein.
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And that is purely based on the biological measurements of individual amino acids that are required for overall health and wellness.
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And again, there are limiting amino acids in foods.
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the major limiting amino acids, which again, are irrelevant to go into detail, but I am going to highlight them.
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Limiting amino acids like leucine, lysine, and methionine all have different implications, meaning they are all not limiting in the same way.
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When you are designing a diet, it is really important if you care about muscle health.
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And again, also with the bioenergetic component of all of the compounds within the food matrix,
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High quality proteins in my mind over time are irreplaceable in the diet.
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They quite frankly are a luxury.
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High quality proteins include things like lean red meats.
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High quality proteins include whey proteins, whey protein concentrates, which have alpha lactalbumin and lactoferrin in it, which all help with the immune system and have other benefits in the body.
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High quality proteins include egg,
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fish, chicken, etc., dairy.
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Lower quality proteins, while someone can get all the protein they need, again, from a plant-based source, it is what we would consider, based on the amino acid profile, lower quality.
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And lower quality proteins would be things like wheat and soy, tempeh, rice, pea blends.
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There s one more layer to that.
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The one more layer to that is that it s not just about protein.
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It is also about the vitamins and minerals, things like iron.
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It s very important for energy and aging.
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B12, zinc, selenium, etc.
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And we must consider food as a whole food matrix.
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And high quality dietary protein has been shown to support muscle health and aging over time.
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It s also been shown to support body composition.
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And one more thing to keep in mind when we look at the RDA, which is the Recommended Dietary Allowance, which is the minimum amount of protein to prevent deficiencies, which comes out to 0.37 grams per pound or 0.8 gram per pound or 0.8 gram per kg.
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That is the bare minimum to prevent deficiencies.
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Those numbers were based on higher quality proteins.
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So that throws a little bit of a wrench into what is the optimal amount of protein for someone who stays away from animal-based products.
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It is probably more significant than that for a baseline recommendation.
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We started this whole episode talking about things like cognitive decline, and I know one of the things that people are talking about right now is the rise in dementia and Alzheimer s.
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For those interested in preventing those things, what role does our muscle health play in that paradigm?
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Well, first, I want to lay at the feet of the listener that I did my training in geriatrics.
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My clinical responsibility was as a geriatrician, which means the fellow s job is to take care of a memory and aging clinic.
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as well as round on the nursing homes, see patients in the dementia ward, and really be there at the forefront of those individuals with Alzheimer s, whether it s Alzheimer s, whether it s vascular dementia, etc.
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There s many different challenges with cognitive impairment all under somewhat one umbrella, but different causes.
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The biggest piece of advice that I could give anybody, which is, again, one reason why I do this work, is that muscle health is, again, the pinnacle.
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It is the organ of longevity.
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Alzheimer s disease, a large majority of individuals with Alzheimer s disease, that can be prevented.
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Obviously, not everybody.
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There are genetic predispositions.
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There are challenges.
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There s other things.
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But on a very fundamental level, body composition plays a huge role.
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When we have insulin resistance in the body, we have insulin resistance in the brain.
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Alzheimer s disease can be thought of as type three diabetes of the brain.
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I appreciate that I m oversimplifying this, whether it is tau proteins or the misfoldings of
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This protein or that protein etc.
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There s not much that we can directly do to influence that but the thing that we can directly do to Improve our cognitive function and protect our brain is to maintain an appropriate body weight Now there s no evidence to support John.
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I can t tell you what your ideal muscle mass is I could potentially give you an idea, but I do
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do know that anything over 30% body fat is likely putting you at a tremendous risk and that arguably your body fat percentage should be lower than that.
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And when we swap out skeletal muscle or swap in skeletal muscle for body fat, we do see improvements in triglycerides.
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We see improvements in the body s inflammation markers like HSCRP.
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We see improvement in vascular health.
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Alzheimer s, there s a component of Alzheimer s, which is Alzheimer s, which is a vascular disease.
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But I cannot overstate the importance of healthy skeletal muscle to protect body composition.
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And again, there s influences from myokines, from contracting skeletal muscle.
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A large portion of the brain is for motor control.
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The body is designed to move.
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The brain is designed to respond.
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Although arguably the brain moves first, something first.
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And the other aspect of that is sleep.
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You do need sleep for brain health.
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It s when the brain, the glial cells of the brain clean themselves.
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When I was a fellow, one of the questions that we always ask is how much sleep are you getting?
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Do you sleep with your phone by your head?
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How much alcohol are you drinking?
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Alcohol can have a negative effect on cognition.
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But again, Alzheimer s is not a disease that we take lightly at all.
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My grandmother died from Alzheimer s disease.
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And there are components to that are largely preventable.
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People don t realize how much that sleep plays in amyloid plaque removal and all those things that if they re not taken care of can lead to so many blockages of the flow of those plaques not going down through your spinal cord and out of your body.
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One more thing, these issues, just like cardiovascular disease begins in your 30s, these issues begin in our 30s.
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It s the midlife muscle health that play a role in determining later life dementia.
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So these diseases that we think that just appear as we age, like cardiovascular disease, they re not.
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Same with dementia.
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These diseases begin when we are younger, and luckily, we can actually do something about that.
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Well, I appreciate you sharing that, Gabrielle.
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And I wanted to ask, in your patients, what transformations have you witnessed when they prioritize the Forever Strong approaches to health?
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Well, I m so fortunate because my patients are amazing humans.
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And one thing that I will tell you, again, I can t stress this enough, is that medicine is just the modality.
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It s just the modality that I use to get the best version out of people and to prescribe.
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The biggest thing that I prescribe for people is reassurance.
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reassurance that individuals will be able to become the person they want to be.
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Transformations that I ve seen is I have seen changes in body composition, weight loss, energy, fulfilling dreams, because they now have more confidence.
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I ve seen men transform their lives.
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from feeling like they ve got the dad bod to being so tired that they can t function to run with their kids to transforming not only their personal relationships, their professional relationships, but also feeling like they deserve the body that they know they had in college.
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I ve seen course correction in triglyceride levels.
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I ve seen improvement in testosterone.
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I ve seen, you name it, I ve likely seen improvement in these domains.
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And again, we could go down a million different roads on this patient or that patient, again, men and women.
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But at the end of the day, it s who they become because they implement structure.
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They keep integrity with themselves.
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They re no longer distracted by information overload.
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People use that as a crutch to say, I don t know what to do.
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I m so confused.
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There s so much information.
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I ve made this book simple so that everybody can read it and everybody can pick up the book, read it, transform their own life, and then they can pass it on to somebody else.
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And my last question, which I love to ask is for the listener today, what are some actionable takeaways that they can take from Forever Strong?
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And what do you hope a reader or a listener will take away from today s discussion?
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Well, I ll start with what I hope that they take away from today s discussion.
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Number one, it s never too late to become the person that you desire to be.
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Whether it s mentally or physically, it is absolutely within your control.
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Now, from the physical aspect, I hope people take away that they must prioritize protein regardless of what they are hearing.
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That first meal of the day is most important.
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For most men, I recommend between 40 and 50 grams of high-quality dietary protein at that first meal.
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And again, the last meal before you go into an overnight fast should also be robust in protein.
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I outline how to do that.
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One gram per pound, ideal body weight.
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It s a great way to think about it.
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And the other aspect is that you must train.
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You must do some kind of resistance training.
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I do think that it is non-negotiable.
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I don t think that you will ever regret feeling strong.
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You could combine some kind of cardiovascular activity for the health of mitochondria.
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You must add some kind of resistance training.
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You allow for the health of your skeletal muscle.
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There s flux and you have a place to store glucose.
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And at the end of the day, muscle is the organ of longevity.
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If a listener would like to know more about you, where is a great central place they can go to?
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Definitely can go to my website, and that s drgabriellion.com.
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If they want to get to know more about me, I do have a podcast called the Dr. Gabrielle Lion Show.
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I just named it that so people could find it.
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Very active on Instagram, and I have a great newsletter.
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People can sign up for free.
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I do a ton of free information, and we look at studies and all sorts of things.
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But again, I would love to direct people, most importantly, to the website where they can learn more.
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And my new book, Forever Strong, took two years to write.
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It is an evidence-based guide to getting the best out of yourself.
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Well, Gabrielle, it was such a privilege to have you on the show today.
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Thank you so much for bringing such insight to our listeners.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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I really appreciate the conversation.
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I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, and I wanted to thank Gabrielle and Atria Books for the honor and privilege of having her appear on the show today.
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Links to all things Gabrielle will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
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Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.
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Videos are on YouTube at both John or Myles, as well as Passionstruck Clips.
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Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals.
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My new book is now available for pre-order and you can find it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you shop for books.
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It s all about 12 powerful principles to help you unlock your most intentional life.
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You can catch me on all the social channels at John R. Miles, or you can sign up for my newsletter at either johnrmiles.com or passionstruck.com.
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You re about to hear a preview of the Passion Strike podcast interview that I did with author, journalist, and designer Simone Stolzoff, author of the new book, Good Enough Job.
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We delve into how work has become all-consuming and why it is so challenging for us to detach from it.
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I spent my entire 20s looking for that perfect job.
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I worked in four different industries, all the while looking for that job that I felt could make me the fullest version of who I was.
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I say that I m a recovering workist because now, on the other side of 30, as I think about my future and kind of where I m at now in my career, I ve taken an approach that really treats work as one part of who I am.
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not the entirety of who I am.
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And I think that approach has actually benefited my work life.
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It has allowed me to draw better boundaries and be more conscious and intentional about the hours that I am giving to my work.
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It has allowed me to have better relationships in my community and ultimately to be a more well-rounded version of who I am.
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Remember that we rise by lifting others, so share this show with those that you love and care about.
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And if you found today s episode useful, then please consider sharing it with someone that you love and care about.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Now go out there and become Hash Instructor.