¶ Intro / Opening
Everyone, Welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Now, you will have heard me talk ad nauseum about the importance of adequate protein so that we can sustain our muscle mass and our bone density as we get older.
And you've also heard me talk about.
As you get older, our ability to turn over protein what's called muscle protein synthesis, is actually degraded, which is why as you get older you need more protein intake. Now, there's lots of research and discussion in the research about how much protein is actually required, and also the timing of that protein. Does it need to be spread evenly throughout the day or can there be big chunks of it at certain times unless at other times.
And then the other.
Question is about the source of the protein, whether it is better getting your protein from animal sources, or if you're vegetarian or vegan, does that protein that you're getting from plant breas stuff is it enough to stimulate muscle
¶ Background on protein needs for muscle building
protein synthesis.
So, just for a.
Little bit of background before I talk about the study that attempted to answer these questions. Basically, the capacity of a protein source to stimulate muscle protein synthesis is generally determined by its content of essential amino acids, all of which are required to fuel this metabolic process, hence they're called essential amino acids. And then the next thing is about its digestibility, or how much of the amino acids from the protein are made available to scaletal muscle when
they pass through your digestive system. Now, lots of research has suggested that plant based protein sources are less anabolic muscle building and than animal based protein sources because they contain fewer essential amino acids and are often deficient in at least one essential amino acid. And additionally, evidence from
several studies suggest that plant based proteins are also less digestible. Now, in some of the studies that provide participants with protein, whether that's animal based source or plant based sourced, what they find is that the post prandial that's after you've eaten and muscle protein synthesis rates were higher when the
animal based protein source was ingested. However, the dose of protein in these studies was generally and less than the third grams that were kind of thinking might be a bit of a cut off for stimulating muscle protein synthesis, and was derived from a single source, which is typically not what we tend to do when we're eating, especially eating meals. You don't just have your protein from one source,
particularly if you're vegetarian or vegan. Now, there is also evidence from other studies that indicates that when the dose of protein is at least thirty grams in one meal, the muscle protein synthesis and then the activation of what's called m tors signaling pathway that basically drives that anabolic process. The suggestion is it doesn't differ between plant based and animal pre sources if you're eating at least thirty grams
in one go. And also studies have shown that muscle protein synthesis was found not to differ between plant based and anoma based sources when the protein was derived from multiple plant be its sources, which is important because as I alluded to you earlier, and that is more representative of how people eat in practice. So here was a
¶ Study design and methods
study that I found very interesting which looked at different groups of people in a nine day randomized control trial, all consisting of young adults that concerned either a vegan or omnivorous diet with a balanced or an unbalanced protein distribution throughout the day, right, And what that basically means is that there was one group who had an omnivorous
diet including some animal stuff and some plant stuff. The protein source from for these guys throughout the day seventy percent from what it was from meat, and they at five small meals a day to spread that protein out throughout the day, and basically they had twenty percent of the total daily protein in each meal. So these were the guys that were in the omnivorous balanced group. Then they had an omnivorous unbalanced group. So again seventy percent
of their protein source was for meat. They got the same amount of total protein, but it was spread over three meals a day, and instead of being thirty three percent in each meal, they had ten percent of breakfast, which is often really what happens. People need a very low quality protein or low protein breakfast, and then thirty
percent from lunch and then sixty percent from dinner. And that's what you see quite often is people what we call they battload their protein, eat most of their protein at dinner.
So this was looking at kind of real world stuff.
Then you had two vegan groups that were pretty much the same as those two groups one hundred percent of their protein source was from plants. The first group was spread over five mills a day, twenty percent of the protein in each meal, and then the second group, the same as the other group in the omnivorous diet, was three meals a day, ten percent of breakfast, thirty percent at lunch, and sixty percent at dinner.
And they also completed.
Three bouts of supervised resistance training during the study over the nine days, and they measured their muscle protein synthesis to see if they were any changes. Now, there were forty participants in this study. The average age was twenty five, their average BMI was twenty four, so they were healthy young people, and the diets were designed to maintain their body weight and contained one point one to one point two grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.
So that's probably just enough.
Actually from the recommendations you've heard me talk about the old nzero point eight grams is just not enough, but certainly in young people that one point one to one point two seems to be enough.
Now, I'm never start.
Their protein was from a mix of beef, chicken, dirry, and pork, and they didn't actually mention the sources of protein in a vegan.
Diet, which I'm really not sure why.
And then, as I said, they followed them for a total of.
Nine days and they analyzed.
Their muscle protein synthesis at rates between the different groups,
¶ Key findings: protein timing and source doesn't matter
and what they find was that there was no difference between any of the groups in their muscle protein synthesis. And basically this is in agreement with some later research that actually shows that it doesn't really matter whether you spread that protein out evenly as long as you're consuming adequate amounts of protein throughout the day. And this is contrary to some of the early research that came out that said, actually you need to make sure that in
every meal you're getting thirty grams of protein. And I've actually talked about that before. So this is a little bit surprising but encouraging because that's typically the way that people eat, is they tend to backload their protein into liater in the day. So this is actually supportive of
some of the newer evidence. As I said earlier on, So the thinking for a while in the last few years is that muscle protein synthesis is a saturable process, in other words, ingesting a certain amount of protein maximizes the muscle protein synthesis response, and that was about thirty grams from the recent search, and ingesting a larger amount of protein doesn't actually give you any further benefit, and that's why people had said, if you're having more than
thirty grams, you're probably wasting some of your protein, so you need to spread that evenly throughout the day. And the evidence from this comes from studies where participants consume protein and then they measure muscle protein census for a few hours, and it was fine that zero point two four to zero point four grams of protein per kilogram of body weight on averages, which kind of equates to
around thirty grams when you average it. Rind that that seemed to maximize the muscle protein response, and that, in combination with the idea that activation of muscle protein synthesis is relatively short lived, that led to the recommendation to consume an amount of protein every four or five hours when you're awake to maximize your muscle protein synthesis rates
throughout the day. However, more recent research is actually consistent with this study, because, for example, there's a study by Brad Schoenenberg who's he's probably the lead researcher in this
¶ How this changes protein recommendations
and what he does is he in this study, he fed participants either twenty five grams or one hundred grams of protein, and that's a lot undergraunds of proteins, a lot, and he thought then measured their muscle protein synthesis rate and he found that after four hours there was no difference, and that's typically when the studies ended.
But he then followed.
Up for a total of twelve hours post consumption and found that the muscle protein synthesis rate was forty percent higher in that twelve hours overall when people consumed one hundred grams of protein. So that study, along with the one that I just mentioned, this current one and probably no tweaks the recommendations and certainly how I am thinking about the protein and the protein spread and as well as that has implications for intermittent fasting.
So some of the.
I guess the anti intermitting fasting brigade and I certainly had had some of this line of thinking was that basically, if you're fast until midday, that you're probably going to be cannibalizing your muscle. And look, this is true if
you haven't had enough protein at dinner. So what these bits of research suggests collectively is that the typical eating pattern that we've had of backloading our protein throughout to the end of the day, as in having the most a bit at dinner is actually not a bad idea because with Brad Schoenenberg's research, it's going to sustain you over that at least twelve hour period after you've eaten,
and you'll not be cannibalizing your muscle. So I think the take comes from this study and the other ones that I've mentioned as well, is it really if you're just a normal human, not an elite athlete or not a bodybuilder, who just wants to make sure that they are are not cannibalizing their muscle, then what type of protein you eat, whether it's vegetarian, vegan, or from animal products, doesn't really matter that much, and how you spread it doesn't matter that much as long as you are consuming
adequate stuff, adequate amounts of protein throughout the day. And my reading of the research in order to be safe is that if you are younger i below, about fifty one point four to one point six grams of protein per kilogram of body weight will be sufficient unless you're doing a lot of endurance training, and then your needs actually go up. They don't go up so much if you're doing strength training, which is a bit counterintuitive, but
you just become more efficient. And then when you get older post fifty, and I think definitely you need to be upping that to around the two grams of protein per kilogram per day. So there you have it, and I guess the other takeout from this study is that the research is always changing, so never say absolutely and never say never you look like an absolute dickhead in six months or a year from now. That's it for this week, folks, catch you next time.