Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,
where we revisit past episodes for the
most potent and actionable science-based
tools for mental health, physical
health, and performance.
I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor
of neurobiology and opthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine. And now for
my discussion with Dr. Lane Norton. Dr.
Norton, thank you so much for being
here. This is a long time coming and I
have to say as a fellow PhD scientist, I
feel a great kinship with you. I know
you have tremendous experience in in
fitness and nutrition in a number of
areas. I'd like to start um with
something that's rather basic and yet
can be pretty complex and that's this
issue of energy balance and energy
utilization. What happens when we eat
food of any kind and how is that
actually converted into energy as a way
of framing up the discussion around
weight loss, weight maintenance, weight
gain and body composition? It's a great
question and like you said this is one
of those things where you know people
use the term calories in calories out
and they say well that's way too
simplistic and I'm like if you look at
what actually makes up calories in
calories out it's actually very
complicated. So a calorie just refers to
a unit of energy of heat specifically.
Really what you're talking about is the
potential chemical energy that is in the
bonds of the macronutrients of food,
right? And by digesting, assimilating
and metabolizing those nutrients, we are
able to create energy. The inroduct of
that mostly is ATP, adenazin
triphosphate, which is your body's
energy currency. So a lot of metabolism
is simply creating ATP. Protein's a
little bit different because protein uh
gets converted to amino acids which can
be used for muscle protein synthesis or
protein synthesis in other tissues. Uh
but it also can be converted through
glucanogenesis to glucose and there also
are some ketogenic amino acids as well.
Then you have fatty acids which are able
to create energy through what's called
beta oxidation where essentially you're
taking these fatty acids and you're
lpping them off two carbons at a time to
produce acetal coa which again can go
into the KB cycle produce those hydrogen
ions that can then power the production
of ATP. So that's kind of like at the
cellular level of how this stuff works.
But stepping back and taking it back out
like what does that have to do with
weight loss or weight gain, right? When
you think about the balance of energy in
versus energy out, sounds very simple.
But let's look at what actually makes up
energy in versus energy out. First of
all, you've got to realize that the
energy inside of the equation is more
difficult to track than people think.
So, one, food labels, which we like to
think is being, you know, like from upon
high, uh, can have up to a 20% error in
them.
>> Really?
>> Oh, yeah. The second aspect is there's
what's called your energy but then
there's also metabolizable energy right
so if you have uh food stuff with say a
lot of insoluble fiber typically
insoluble fiber uh is not really
digestible and so you could have you
know quite a bit of carbohydrate but if
you can't extract the energy from it and
typically this is because insoluble
fiber from like plant material
the carbohydrate or and even some of the
protein is bound up in the uh plant
structure which makes makes it
inaccessible to digestive enzymes. And
so this is what like adds bulk to your
school stool and whatnot, but again
reduces the metabolizable energy in
there. And there's some evidence that
based on people's individual gut
microbiome that some people may actually
be better at extracting energy out of
fiber compared to other people. So just
starting off right there, okay, there's
there's quite a bit of play in the
energy inside of things. Now, one of the
things people will say is, "Well, see,
that's why you shouldn't worry about
tracking calories, cuz you know, if the
food labels can be 20% off and what I'll
say is, okay, I understand where you're
coming from, but typically if it's off,
it's going to be consistently off." And
if you're consistent with how you track
it, eventually you'll be able to know
kind of what you're taking in. So, now
let's look at the energy out side of the
equation, which is actually way more
complicated, right? And so, your energy
out is a few different uh buckets. The
first one and the biggest one is your
resting metabolic rate. So your arm rar
that for most people is anywhere from 50
to 70% of your total daily energy
expenditure. Sedentary people will be on
the higher end of that. So it'll be a
bigger proportion. Whereas people who
are more active it'll be a little bit
lower. Not because their metabolic rate
is lower but because they're expending a
greater percentage of their calories
from physical activity. Then you have
something called the thermic effect of
food which is a relatively small
percentage of your total daily energy
expenditure. It's about 5 to 10%. Very
difficult to measure. And usually what
researchers do when they're kind of
looking at this stuff is they just kind
of make an assumption about it. They use
a constant. And that refers to the
amount of energy it takes to extract the
energy out of food. You can't just eat
food and then you know it just appears
in your cells and you start doing stuff.
It has to be systematically broken down
and put into forms that can actually
produce energy. A lot of times people
will say something like, well, not all
calories are created equal. That's not
true because calories is just a unit of
measurement, right? That would be like
saying not all seconds on a clock are
created equal. Yes, they are. All
sources of calories may have
differential effects on energy
expenditure and appetite. So if we look
at something like fat for example, the
TEF of fat is about 0 to 3%. Meaning if
you eat 100 calories from fat, your net
will be about 97 to 100. So the process
of breaking down that fat essentially
subtracts some of the the calories away
because you used it in creating energy
correct by breaking those chemical bonds
to create ATP.
>> Correct. Okay. Correct. Fat is actually
the easiest thing to convert into
energy.
>> Then you have carbohydrate which has a
TF of like 5 to 10%. So you eat 100
calories from carbohydrate and obviously
like the fiber content makes a big
difference on this. But if you eat 100
calories you'll net 90 to 95. protein is
about a 20 to 30% TEF. So if you eat 100
calories from protein, you're only
netting 70 to 80. Now you're still net,
you know, people say, well, you can't
eat too much protein. Well, you know,
people will ask, well, can protein be
stored as fat? The carbons from protein,
it's unlikely it's going to wind up in
atapost tissue, but if you're eating a
lot of protein overall as part of a lot
of calories, it has to be oxidized and
it can provide a calorie cushion for
other things to be stored in fat. But
protein itself does provide you know a
net positive for calories but less so
than carbohydrate or fat and tends to be
more satiating. So again when people
talk about you know are all calories
created equal yes but all sources of
calories may have differential effects
on energy expenditure and appetite. So
that's the TEF bucket and the BMR
bucket. Then we go to physical activity.
And physical activity is essentially two
parts. There's exercise which is kind of
your purposeful movements like you go
out for a walk, you do a training
session, I mean whatever any purposeful
activity and then you have what's called
NEAt which is non-ex exercise activity
thermogenesis. So for example if I when
I'm talking if I'm waving around my
hands if I'm tapping my feet if I'm
whatever that's NEAt the calorie burn
from NEAT is actually pretty
significant. We're not talking about 100
calories or 200 calories per day. We're
talking about in some cases hundreds of
thousands, excuse me, hundreds to maybe
even close to a thousand calories per
day.
>> And what's very interesting about NEAt
is that seems to be the most modifiable
of, you know, BMR, TEF, and NEAt. NEAt
seems to be far more modifiable. The
next thing is a lot of people weigh very
sporadically. And I'll tell people like
if you're going to make intentional
weight loss a goal and again this can be
different for different people but
typically I tell people weigh in first
thing in the morning right after you go
to the bathroom do it every day and take
the average of that for the week and
then compare that to the next week's
average as somebody who weighs
themselves pretty pretty regularly. I
mean my weight will fluctuate you know
five six pounds and not seemingly
changing much you know and that's just
you know those short-term changes are
fluid. So, if you're somebody who just
randomly is weighing in and you're
eating at a calorie deficit and you just
weigh in one day where you just whatever
reason holding some more fluid, then you
go, "Oh, see this isn't working." When
in reality, your average might be
dropping. Weight fluctuations are
actually identified as a major reason
why people get discouraged from weight
loss. It kind of stops the buy in, you
know, when they have a fluctuation up.
So, that's one of the reasons one of the
reasons early on that low carb diets
tend to work really well is because
people lose a lot of water weight.
really quickly and they get that buy in.
So, oh, this is working. People think
about I'm going to do a diet and I'm
going to lose this weight and they do
not give any thought to what happens
afterwards. Think about if you have some
kind of chronic disease or a diabetic,
right? You you can't just take insulin
once and that's it, right? You got to
take it continuously otherwise you're
going to have problems. You can't create
a new version of yourself while dragging
your old habits and behaviors behind
you. So, what I'll tell people is
because people say, "Well, I'm doing a
carnivore diet or I'm doing this diet or
that diet." And I'll say, "That's fine.
Do you see yourself doing that for the
rest of your life?" And if the answer is
no, you probably need to rethink what
your approach is going to be. Could you
briefly talk about how macronutrients,
including protein, impact satiety from
the standpoint of somebody who, for
instance, would like to quote unquote
lose a few pounds, right? probably would
be happy to gain a little bit of lean
body mass provided it was in a
particular location on their body. That
seems to be a a thing now, directed
hypertrophy, if you will. And how much
they should focus on protein as a core
component of creating this diet. And are
animal sources of protein indeed more
bioavailable? That's a tricky word for
sake of muscle building, but also for
sake of somebody who just would like to
lose body fat. They don't want to lose
muscle and they'd like to bring their
weight down a few pounds. of the
macronutrients, protein is definitely
the biggest lever that you can pull
because even if you know it doesn't take
a ton of protein to get a lot of the
muscle building benefits. I mean, I
think the benefits really start to
plateau out around 1.6 g per kilogram of
body weight. There's some evidence that
maybe even up to like 2.4 or 2.8 g per
kilo may give like a little bit more
benefit. I think it probably looks
something like an asmtope in terms of a
curve where as you put more into the
system you always get a little bit more
but it just gets to the point where it's
so infantessimally small benefit that
it's for all intents of purposes no
benefit. There doesn't seem to be really
downsides to it even like up to very
high levels of protein. in Jose Antonio
did a study that was a year-long
randomized control trial and again it's
just one year but they were looking at
all sorts of different biioarkers and
basically even up to like four grams per
kilogram of protein they couldn't really
find any negative health outcomes from
it other than people were just so
satiated they ended up eating less
calories. So protein is a big lever
because one, it has a higher thermic
effect of food. So you're getting a
little bit more calorie burn per day,
even though it's not a ton because TEF
is a pretty small percentage of your
overall energy expenditure, but still a
benefit. You're getting the effects on
lean body mass. It's going to, if you're
in a diet, it's going to help preserve
lean body mass. If you're at
maintenance, it's going to help build or
preserve lean body mass. And if you're
in a surplus, it's going to help build
or preserve lean body mass. If I'm going
to eat, let's say, two grams um per
kilogram of body weight protein and I'm
not eating multiple meals per maybe I'm
eating two or three meals per day, I'm
certainly going to be eating more than
the 30 gram threshold that was thrown
around for a long time that we can only
assimilate 30 grams of protein per meal.
Should I just not worry about that? Some
of it is going to go towards the thermic
uh effect of food. Uh some of that might
be converted into glucose of all things
through gluconioenesis. So, should I
worry about this 30 gram cut off?
Because I think balancing the the 1.6
gram per kilogram body weight threshold
with number of meals with the need to
exercise and work and live my life and
sleep, etc. Pretty soon you you you run
into bottlenecks where you just can't do
it all or you're spending so much time
trying to focus on all
>> you can't optimize all the things at the
same time.
>> You lose your mind and your body. Most
Americans get about 65 to 70% of their
protein at dinner, right? Breakfast
tends to be pretty minimal protein. So
to answer your question, I do think that
timing and frequency matters a little.
Not so much frequency, but distribution
more so, but it's a it's a much smaller
lever than just getting enough total
protein in. And then as far as like
animal versus plant, I used to be in the
camp of there's no way somebody can
build as much muscle on a plant-based
diet. And now I think I've come back to
you can. It just requires a little bit
more planning. And I don't want to say
always, but it's very difficult to do
without an isolated source of protein.
So unless you're going to supplement
with an isolated plant source of
protein, it's very difficult to get
enough without going over on total
calories because you can figure that
especially like take somebody who may be
calorically restricted trying to get
enough protein from whole intact plant
sources. So you've got a few different
things working against you. One, the
sources of protein you're consuming also
have carbohydrate and or fat. Two, it's
a less bioavailable form of protein. And
three, it's a lower quality of protein
in terms of it has typically less
lucine, less branching amino acids, and
less essential amino acids.
>> You answered the question that I almost
interrupted you to ask, which was does
it boil down to the leucine content? And
um it sounds like that is one of the
components and that uh a lot of the
vegan and vegetarian sources of
excellent protein that excellent protein
vegetarian or vegan source is
co-packaged with calories from
carbohydrates and or fat that make it
hard to stay stay under the caloric
threshold whereas a steak is I'm not and
obviously for people might want to avoid
that for ethical reasons but that's a
different matter entirely but a steak or
a piece of chicken or an egg is well an
egg you know has a yolk which is there's
fat there, but is almost a pure protein
fat source. There's no carbohydrate
along for the ride.
>> You know, you can do it. Takes a little
more planning and you're almost always
if you're a vegan especially, you're
going to be better off like
supplementing with some isolated form of
protein or vegan form of protein. Now,
this is where it gets into people say,
well, what about the limiting amino
acids and those sorts of things? It's a
consideration. Some of the better forms
of vegan protein in terms of amino acid
content are like soy. Now I can
everybody hear everybody screaming
online about their testosterone levels
in terms of actual outcomes and looking
at testosterone. There was a recent meta
analysis looking at soy and I think if
it's your only source of protein then
maybe the dosage is high enough to cause
some weird effects but if you're just
using it like once or twice a day
doesn't seem to have an effect on
testosterone or estrogen. So that can be
a decent source of protein because it is
a complete protein source. Um it does
have a pity cause of one which picaus is
basically a uh a measure of
protein quality based on does it provide
enough of all the amino acids so that
none are limiting and so soy is one of
the only vegan sources that does that.
Interestingly potato protein isolate
actually has a similar essential amino
acid content to whey. So isolated potato
protein it's just really hard to find.
Another reason using an isolated protein
can be helpful is because it's more
bioavailable as well when it's been
isolated out. When it's the protein
bound up in the actual plant material,
it tends to be less bioavailable. Now,
cooking can help increase the
bioavailability because it breaks some
of those bonds and and whatnot. The
other thing to consider with the vegan
sources of protein is the lucine
content. So one of the studies we did
was we looked at wheat, soy, egg and
whey is nitrogenous meaning we equated
protein between the groups isocoric. We
equated calories and we looked at muscle
protein synthesis and I think this was
the meals were 15% of total energy from
protein. So like a like your food guide
pyramid level of protein. uh and we saw
that in the wheat and soy group uh they
did not increase muscle protein
synthesis but the egg and whey group
increased muscle protein synthesis. Now
what's really interesting is we went
back and we took wheat and added free
leucine to it to match the leucine
content of whey and the protein
synthetic response was identical.
>> So again I I don't like to simplify
things too much but leucine appears to
really be driving this ship. a few
different options for the vegan folks
out there. You can use an isolated
source of of protein. And again, like
there's going to be good options coming
because this plant-based way is going to
be a great option for folks. You can add
free lucine to it to whatever your
source of protein is.
>> Just buy supplemented lucine. Now, it
tastes horrible. It's completely
non-polar. Does not dissolve in anything
capsules.
>> Gross. It can't be put into capsules.
Yeah. So, you could take a capsule. For
example, if you're eating your normal
meal, you could just take a capsule of
like one gram of lucine. It's probably
going to bump you up, bump you up enough
that you're going to be good to go.
There's options like blends, especially
with corn. Corn is actually very high in
lucine as a percentage of its protein.
Now, you got to remember like you go eat
corn on a cob and you're getting like
two grams of total protein. So, it's not
that much leucine. But if you isolate
out the protein, put it into a powder,
well now you know when you're getting
like 80 90% of the weight is now
protein. Corn is actually about 12%
leucine in terms of the protein. So a
great source of leucine. It is like
almost frank deficient in some other
amino acids, but you can blend it with a
few other sources of protein like you
could blend it with a soy, a pea, and
you can create these complimentary
blends that would actually have quite a
bit of leucine but also some of the
other essential amino acids. So, there
are options out there for plant-based
folks. And I mean, we have seen people
who are plant-based build impressive
amounts of muscle. There's quite a few
bodybuilders that are plant-based. Can
we come up with a relatively short
summary of the following? Tell me if
this is um correct or not. That most of
us should be focused on ingesting
non-processed and minimally processed
foods.
>> I would 100% agree with what you said
that trying to focus on minimally
processed foods is very important. The
one caveat I would say is I think it's
important to understand why processed
food just gets people to spontaneously
eat more. Uh Kevin Hull showed this in
his study that was I mean very I mean he
designed some of the most elegant
studies in nutrition. They basically
took people from a minimally processed
food diet and then gave them access to
ultrarocessed foods very few
instructions just eat till you feel
satisfied and they spontaneously
increase their calorie intake by 500
calories a day. That's massive. Now,
that being said, it depends on the
individual and their goals. If your goal
is to, for example, build muscle or
maintain a high body weight for a sport,
for example, like an NFL offensive
lineman or or something of that nature,
your protein, your fiber, your
micronutrients, these are your
responsibilities. But those become much
easier to hit when you have higher
calories. If you're eating 4,000
calories a day for whatever goal you
have, you're probably going to have some
left over. And like good luck eating
4,000 calories from minimally processed
foods. You quite frankly you'll be
miserable because you're you're going to
have such gut fill that you're going to
feel like you can't even move. And so
that's why I'm so pedantic and a
stickler about saying, "Okay, yes, it's
a good idea to eat a minimally processed
food and try to avoid processed foods,
but not because processed foods are bad
per se, but what the outcome tends to be
from a lot of processed food
consumption, which is over consuming
calories and then therefore, you know,
energy toxicity negatively contributing
to your health." This I think is a
perfect segue for something that
>> first brought us together
which was you know which was this this
thing about artificial sweeteners.
Artificial sweeteners are many things.
So I'd like to talk about their effects
on blood sugar
>> in the acute sense and then the gut
microbiome data I think are interesting
enough to discuss. I have changed my
view on artificial sweeteners based on
what you've taught me. So, this is a
case where I've completely changed my
view, which is that I don't have any
problem with them whatsoever based on
the current data, which is not to say
that I'm, you know, gulping down cupfuls
of sucralose, but I feel okay ingesting
some stevia and some aspartame and I'm
not too worried about it.
>> We have to think about again the
hierarchy of importance, right? And what
are you replacing with? There is no
situation where it is not a net positive
to take somebody who drinks sugar
sweetened beverages and have them drink
an artificially sweetened beverage. like
the in the meta analysis there was
actually a recent network meta analysis
looking at like markers of ataposity
um you know HBA1C a bunch of different
health markers and when you substitute
you know uh uh we'll call it
non-nutritive sweeteners since stevia is
not artificial but so when you
substitute N&S
for the sugar sweetened beverages you
see improvements in a lot of different
things and whenever I post about
non-nutritive sweeteners in the comments
there's There's always one or two or
three people who say, "All I did was cut
out soda and I drank diet soda instead
and I lost 50 pounds or I lost 75
pounds. I even had one person say I lost
100 pounds. That's the only thing I
did."
>> Wow.
>> I mean, that's a pretty massive lever to
pull if you consider somebody who might
be having like I mean five or six cokes
a day. We're talking a serious amount of
calories. Is that obese person who lost
100 pounds by doing that, do I really
care about maybe a small alteration to
their gut microbiome? No. because their
gut microbiome is actually much more
healthy now by them having lost all that
excess atapost tissue. So I think it's
one of those things that again it
depends on the situation right like if
somebody's obese and they said well this
is going to help me you know eliminate
sugar sweetened beverage like why would
you want to take that tool away from
them like that's a a great lever to pull
I mean if somebody can lose literally
100 pounds from just one change in
lifestyle that's not even really that
inconvenient of a change that is
powerful but again is it the most
healthy thing they could do and I think
that's kind of like what tends to get
asked we don't know is it healthier than
water
probably not maybe as healthy as it who
knows but I really make all those
caveats because you don't want to have
people who could use this as a tool
think well no I can't do this because
it's actually bad for me
>> right
>> if it helps you lose 50 lbs or 75 pounds
or whatever it is trust me it's not bad
for you
>> seed oils there are a number of folks
out there who are arguing that seed oils
are the source of you know the obesity
epidemic everything. And then there are
those that would argue just the opposite
um that you know meat is the source of
all problems etc. And I think we've
appropriately framed things that it's
never that black and white. It's simply
not. Are there any data on seed oils?
The first thing I'll say is seed oils
have have negatively contributed to our
overall health because people in the
last you know 20 30 years what they have
tend to add into their diet that has
increase the overall calorie load is oil
mostly from seed oils but when we look
at like onetoone replacement with other
fats and so I if you look at the
epidemiology yeah you can find some
epidemiology showing people who consume
more seed oil have more negative health
outcomes comes problem is again tied up
with a multitude of other behaviors.
And then you can find mechanisms and the
the idea is well they're polyunsaturated
which means in the fatty acid chain
there's multiple double bonds which
those double bonds can be oxidized uh
when they're exposed to heat and some
other things. And so the idea is well
when you cook with these things and they
may get oxidized and that's going to
cause inflammation in your body. That's
a a plausible mechanism. So, as always,
I defer to the human randomized control
trials. What you tend to find when you
substitute saturated fats for
polyunsaturated fats, inflammation is
basically neutral. There there's some
studies that show a positive effect of
doing polyunsaturated fats, but it
probably depends on the individual
polyunsaturated fat. And that's the
other thing I don't really is difficult
because you're you're categorizing like
everything in this one bucket and there
are some differences between individual
fatty acids. Even with saturated fat
like for example steic acid doesn't tend
to raise LDL cholesterol whereas you
know saturated fat as a whole tends to
raise LDL cholesterol but there are some
saturated fats that don't. So again it's
like we're putting things in buckets and
it's a little more nuanced than that. Uh
then if you look at the effects of know
polyunsaturated fats on markers of
cardiovascular disease again tends to
either be a neutral or positive effect
when you substitute saturated fat for
polyunsaturated fat. Now if you want to
get into like monounsaturated versus
polyunsaturated there's quite a bit of
disagreement between the studies. What I
would say based on the human randomized
control trials is that you're probably
better off consuming monounsaturated and
polyunsaturated in place of saturated
fat. But again, if the idea is, well,
that means polyunsaturated are good for
me. So, I'm just going to dump a bunch
of oil on everything and now you're
upping your calories. Well, that's
that's that's a negative now, right?
Because you have to deal with the bigger
problem of overall energy toxicity. So,
I'm not somebody who likes to demonize
individual nutrients. I just haven't
seen really compelling evidence that
seed oils are the root cause of the
problems that are being suggested. And I
think this is a good example of kind of
like whenever there's a something that
pops up in the fitness industry, there's
always like the opposite thing that pops
up and is like the reactionary, you
know, extreme reaction to whatever this
thing was over here. And I think that's
what we're seeing with some of the seed
oil stuff. It's mostly people who are
trying to kind of expose the virtues of
saturated fat. I think it's fine to
consume sims saturated fat, but I think
limiting it to seven to 10% of your
daily calorie intake is probably wise
again based on the consensus of the
evidence I've seen. And so once again,
like we're we're struggling with this.
Okay, we've got this epidemiology and
these mechanisms that sound good, but
then what actually happens when we we do
some human randomized control trials and
and so far I just haven't seen the
evidence to suggest that seed oils are
independently bad for you independent of
the calories they contain. I think we
all have this idea that there's this one
iconic diet out there that is going to
be the best diet for building muscle and
burning fat and uh preventing cancer and
heart disease. And the reality is like
there's overall healthy dietary patterns
that we see that are good for those
things. But when we get down into the
weeds, there's probably some push and
pull here as well. I'd
>> like to ask you about supplements for a
moment. one that I'm very familiar with
which is creatine monohydrate not just
for muscle building but maybe any other
purposes for it.
>> It is the most tested safe and effective
sport supplement we have. I mean it's
just there are thousands of studies on
creatin monohydrate now. I would say
very clearly too if you're using any
other form of creatin I think you're
wasting your money. Creatine
hydrochloride has some hype around it.
It's in it's apparently it's a little
more soluble. Um the claim is that you
need less but there's only a couple
studies on it and it's more expensive.
So I tell people just take creatine
monohydrate. It is tried and true. It's
been shown to saturate the muscle cells
100% with phosphocreatin and that's what
you want. So creatin uh works through a
few different methodologies. One through
increasing phosphocreatin content which
helps improve exercise performance. It
appears to improve recovery and it
increases lean mass
a lot of which is through bringing water
into the muscle cells but that is I mean
muscle cells are mostly water. So when
people say well it's just water that's
what muscle cells mostly are and it also
increases strength and some other
metrics. Now it also has been shown in
studies that people tend to get a
decrease in body fat percentage. Now,
that's probably because they're getting
an increase in lean mass. And so, the
relative is a decrease in body fat
percentage. But there are a few studies
that show a decrease in fat mass as
well. I don't think that creatin is a
fat burner. I think that people are able
to train harder, build more lean tissue,
and so that's probably having an effect
on fat mass. Then, they've actually
shown more recently some cognitive
benefits to creatin, which I find really
interesting as well. But the only knock
on creatin that anybody's been able to
come up with because they've they've
debunked the kidney stuff. They've
debunked the liver stuff. It there's no
evidence that it harms healthy kidney or
liver is hair loss. So what about hair
loss? Because there was one study in
2009 that showed that creatin increased
DHT. But they didn't really show an
effect on any other sex hormone. So it's
kind of strange like you would think if
there was an increase in DHT there would
be like something else that changes as
well. And it's only one study and again
didn't directly measure hair loss
measured DHT which we know is involved
in the loss of the follicule the
follicle.
So what I would say is that I am not
convinced it's only one study never been
replicated to my knowledge and it was
looking at a mechanism rather than an
outcome. Do you emp emphasize the
classic loading of creatine? Taking it a
bunch of times per day and then backing
off or just taking it consistently at
the I think five grams per day is kind
of the typical um dose that people take.
>> So again, no solutions, only trade-offs.
You can load it and you will saturate
your phosphocreatin stores faster, like
usually within a week. Uh if you just
take five grams per day, it'll take two,
three, four weeks. uh but you will get
to the same place and you're probably
going to have a much lower risk of GI
issues. Some people creatin can be a gut
irritant. If it is for some folks, I
would recommend splitting it into
multiple doses. So maybe like multiple
two one or two gram doses per day and
definitely don't load it if you're
somebody who has GI issues from it. The
more into the weeds people tend to get,
and again this is just my own anecdote
and observation, the more into the weeds
they tend to get, the less hard I see
them train. And so one of the things I
really like that Mike Israel said who's
got a PhD and is a bodybuilder himself,
he said, "You can't outscience
hard training." If you're looking to
build muscle and you're looking to
improve your body composition, that the
main thing is just doing the work over
time. And I think a lot of that is
getting the confidence of doing
something hard that there's a payoff at
the end. I get asked a lot in my Q&A,
how do I get more confident? How do I
become more confident? I'll tell people
you have to do you have there there's no
hack you can't read about you got to get
in the arena and I don't mean like
compete in sports necessarily but like
doing a PhD or doing something just
something hard where you're putting
yourself out there and you're saying
this is my goal and I'm going to go for
it you just learn so much by doing that
about yourself
>> I must say this conversation for me has
been tremendously rewarding the amount
of knowledge that you contain inside you
is is astonishing and
>> there's a lot of stuff rattle around up
there.
>> Well, and and we all benefit because
your ability to pull from the
mechanistic side, again, I think in not
limited to but related to your
background in biochemistry all the way
through to the um the impact in humans,
animal studies, being able to understand
where those sit relative to one another.
And then you're obviously a practitioner
of you practice what you preach and what
you talk about pertains to men, to
women, younger people, older people,
people who are vegan, keto, carnivore,
you really are able to net a tremendous
number of ideas while staying really
nuanced and data driven. And so just
want to say for myself and on behalf of
the listeners, really appreciate you
coming in here today and sharing with us
your knowledge. So thank you so much for
your time. Oh, thank you. I appreciate
the opportunity. I I really enjoyed it.