Muscle Mass and Protein in Terms of Longevity

Longevity as it relates to meat is a non-issue. mTOR, yes it exists on the spectrum, and just like IGF 1 and all these other things, some expression of mTOR is phenomenal and necessary for growth, and some of it is too much and probably problematic.

A diet, however, that’s based on animal protein is not going to cause issues with mTOR or any other signaling pathways.

In terms of longevity…

Instead of looking at meat / protein on a meal-to-meal basis, for example in trying to get 20-30 grams of protein per meal and trying to figure out and calculate what is the most your body can process in one meal…

It’s better to think of protein, and amino acids in particular, in this vast reservoir of which we have of 3-4 day cycles of. So for example, as long as you get approximately 350 grams of protein over the course of 3-4 days, you know you’re good. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t have any protein on one day and 200 grams the next day, it sort of evens out.

The body’s great ability to sequester energy, in the form of fat – so that fat goes into fat cells, and carbohydrate go into glycogen stores, the body’s ability to take all these different things and save them for later, this is what we do that with protein…

So in terms of longevity and protein, it’s especially important to maintain muscle mass, this is a definer of longevity!

If you don’t have muscle mass than you lose organ reserve!

What that means is that over time as you get older and older, if you don’t maintain muscle mass, than you start to atrophy.

Your heart say ‘you know what, I don’t kneed to pump that much…’

Your lungs say, ‘you know what I don’t need to breathe that deeply…’

Your liver says ‘you know what I don’t need to process that much….’

And your bones bones say ‘I don’t need to be that strong, she’s not doing that much…’

And over time you lose organ reserve…

Then where you get into trouble…

You’re 80-85 years old, you get up in the middle of the night to pee, then you trip over the cat, and you fall and break a hip, then you get an pneumonia and you can’t cough out the sputum, and then you get congestive heart failure.

That’s what happens.

People rarely die of old age, they die of some organ that gave out because the organ reserve wasn’t enough to sustain. And and that goes back to muscle mass!

So you want to maintain muscle mass. And to do that you need to do the work, you need to exercise, and you need to have enough of the structural components and amino acids to make that happen.

Source: Sisson, Mark, guest. “Part 47 – The Great Meat Debate w/ Mark Sisson, Dr. Paul Saladino, & Dr. Shawn Baker” Peak Human, 18 July 2019. https://www.peak-human.com/home/the-great-meat-debate-with-mark-sisson-dr-paul-saladino-and-dr-shawn-baker