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Ted Talk 89: How Do I Make Sense Of All The Conflicting Information About Nutrition? How much Protein Should You Eat For Longevity? & More – Ask Ted

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Ted Talk 89: How Do I Make Sense Of All The Conflicting Information About Nutrition? How much Protein Should You Eat For Longevity? & More – Ask Ted

Do you ever feel like there is too much conflicting information out there when it comes to nutrition? Do you listen to podcasts, read books, and follow different nutrition gurus on social media, and after spending your precious time going through, you still feel confused and hopeless?

One person says you should eat a lot of protein to get lean and live longer; another one says that too much protein is unhealthy. One person says that carbs make you fat; another one says they are not a big deal.

How do you figure out who to listen to?

Well, this is a problem a lot of people have these days. This is one of the questions that Ted Ryce received from one of the Legendary Life Podcast listeners.

Listener’s Question: “How an average person is supposed to sift through and filter all of that conflicting information out there?”

And that’s why he decided to bring back the Ask Ted segment and answer it in this Ted Talk episode.

If you want science-based information about nutrition but don’t know whom or what to believe, this is the right episode for you.

In this episode, Ted will shine scientific light on today’s critical nutrition conversations and help you clear up the confusion, so you can harness the power of food to promote health, prevent disease and get in great shape.

 

You’ll learn:

  • Why is there so much conflicting information about nutrition?
  • Dealing with conflicting health and fitness information
  • The levels of evidence in the Hierarchy of Evidence:
  • Case reports, opinion papers, and letters
  • Animal trials and in vitro studies
  • Cross-sectional studies
  • Meta-analyses and systematic reviews
  • What is a randomized control trial?
  • How to use the Hierarchy of Evidence to understand nutrition information better
  • Why should you stop reading nutrition or longevity books, and what should you do instead?
  • How much protein do we actually need?
  • And much more…

 

Links Mentioned:  

Hierarchy of Evidence

317: Facts & Myths About Protein For Health And Longevity with Dr. Stuart Phillips

 

Related Episodes:  

459: Busted: Popular Nutrition Myths That Are Keeping You Overweight with Jason Helmes

439: Top Nutrition Myths That Can Cause Weight Gain with Kevin Bass

391: 5 Common Food And Nutrition Myths Debunked with Nick Hiebert

 

Episode Transcript: Ask Ted: How Do I Make Sense Of All The Conflicting Information About Nutrition? How much Protein Should You Eat For Longevity? & More

 Ted Ryce: What is up, and welcome back to another episode of the Legendary Life Podcast. I’m your host Ted Ryce, coach to entrepreneurs and other high-performing professionals. And what we do on this show is, we break down science-based information on how to lose fat, prevent disease, and live a longer, legendary life. 

Today is Friday, and what we usually do is Real Talk Fridays, where we have a bit of a conversational-style podcast. But today is a special listener question or Q&A, I guess is what I should call it. So, we’re going to do a question and answer, and I got the question of all questions for you today. Now, what am I talking about? Well, let’s listen to what Trina has to ask.

Trina: Hey, Ted, I love your podcast, but I supplement with reading tons of books on longevity, and yet some of them give conflicting information. For example, I read one, last night from a doctor who said that eating too much protein is actually not a good thing, that you should really not minimize it, but certainly she doesn’t stress eating more protein. And so, the conflicting information I’m hearing is incredible. Just curious how your average person is supposed to sift through and filter all of that conflicting information out?

Ted: Well, I don’t know about you, but can you relate to Trina’s question? Do you read books? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you read articles? Do you watch YouTube videos? You listen to this podcast, you hear someone say one thing and you hear someone else say another. And oh, it is just an insane situation, where nobody knows who to believe. And I’m going to do my best to answer this, and there are levels to this question. Or should I say… yeah, there are levels to the question, and there are certainly layers to answering this question.

So, let’s talk about the first thing. So, the main question of what Trina said is, how does the average person figure out or filter out the conflicting information? How do you know who’s telling the truth? Or who’s basing their answers on the best evidence? And unfortunately, the answer is you have no idea, the average person is not going to be able to tell. What the average person knows is if you like the person or not. You listen to the person, do they sound confident?

You look at the person. Do they look like someone that you trust? Do they sound like someone that you trust? Do you really know if I know what I’m talking about? Or you do just know that you like my vibe, that I have a trustworthy vibe, that I seem sincere?  But the problem is someone can be very sincere, and like Jim Rohn said, that someone can be sincere, but they can also be sincerely wrong.

So, you’re not going to be able to do it. I’m going to tell you how, but your question was about the average person, so the average person is not going to be able to do it. I’m going to tell you how to become above average, but the average person, you’re not going to— nobody knows. I talk to people all the time on social media, they tell me things—I don’t get into arguments, I don’t get paid to tell people things on social media. So, I don’t even get into arguments and nobody is even going to tell you, if you’re out there arguing and saying, “Oh, carbs make you fat. Oh, don’t eat protein, it’s going to kill you, lead to an early grave,” Nobody’s going to tell you. So you’re not going to be able to figure it out if you’re the average person.

And okay, that’s one level. So just accept, you’re not going to be able to know, Again, I am going to answer how I figured out how to be super confident, and who to listen to and who not to listen to. And now let’s go to the next layer. She read a book that was written by a doctor. Now, she didn’t differentiate, was that a person with a PhD? And what did they have the PhD in? Or were they a medical doctor? And what was their specialty?

Because listening to an emergency medicine doctor who decided to write a book, because they wanted to be more well known, instead of just like they’re a rock star in the emergency room, treating gunshot wounds and stabs and car accidents.

Or someone who’s a gerontologist, for example, a gerontologist or medical doctors who deal with aging patients, aging people. For example, a very famous book that actually had a lot of good information in it, Younger Next Year, was written by a gerontologist. So that’s something to ask if they’ve got a Ph.D., what is it in? Is it in gender studies? A topic for another discussion, for another podcast.

Or do they have a Ph.D. in metabolism, in nutrition, and metabolism? Like my coach who I worked with to get lean, didn’t have a PhD in geography, in paleolithic geography— I don’t know, I’m just making stuff up. I’ve got no idea what the sub-niches of geology is. So, he had a PhD, or he’s getting his PhD, rather in metabolism, human metabolism, by the way.

So, qualifications are important. But then again, here I am, I don’t even have a four-year degree, I did not graduate college. I have a reason, I dropped out of school and my brother was kidnapped and murdered when I was 19. And I dropped out of school for the second time when I was doing my premed requisites, I wanted to go to medical school. Thank God, I didn’t go. Oh, thank God, I didn’t go. But I dropped out when my stepmother died of a heart attack, I dropped out to take care of my dad.

So, you didn’t say this, Trina, but it was almost intimated that a doctor who wrote a book that you read on longevity, said, don’t eat too much protein, it’s not good for you. You don’t have to restrict protein but don’t go out of your way to eat a lot of it. And you almost said, “Well, that’s not what you say on the show.” Or maybe that, but even if you didn’t mean that, that’s totally okay. If you did, and I think it’s a good juxtaposition here for what we’re going to talk about.

So, let’s say this doctor – although we don’t know what their qualifications are – and we’re going to talk about why qualifications don’t really matter in a second. It matters a little bit, but I’m going to tell you what matters more in a second.

And so we have a person who’s a doctor who says, “Don’t eat too much protein. It’s not good for longevity,” versus some bro named Ted on a podcast, man, he’s got a podcast, he’s a college dropout, he’s got a podcast, he says, eat a lot of protein, bro. Sorry, couldn’t help myself. Hopefully, you’re still with me. But I’m kind of making fun of myself.

Hopefully, I don’t come across that bro-ey, right? But you’ve got some guy named Ted, who says, “Oh, eat a lot of protein.” How the hell are you supposed to know who to listen to, especially, Ted doesn’t have an MD, he doesn’t have a PhD, didn’t even graduate college. And this guy who wrote this book, I mean, Ted doesn’t have a book. This guy is a doctor, he’s got a book and he says not to protein. What’s logic tell you? Except, folks, logic doesn’t play a part in this.

Now, look, I hope I’m setting this up well, and I hope you’re at least slightly entertained with my delivery. But let’s talk about this. What really matters? Qualifications, unfortunately, matter a little, but don’t really matter. So, if that’s true, Ted, how can you say that, Ted? The guy went through medical school, or whatever he did. If he got a PhD, oh, my gosh, so much work. What matters then?

Well, we have what’s called the Hierarchy of Evidence when it comes to understanding science. And let’s say specifically with health. So, I want you to look this up, I want you to look up right now, the Hierarchy of Evidence, and all you need to do after that is you click Images.

And there’s a bunch of them here, I’m looking through them right now, trying to figure out which is the best one here. Okay, cool. So, let’s look at the Hierarchy of Scientific Evidence together, because I told you, your average person is not going to be able to distinguish fact from fiction, they just don’t have it, they don’t get the chops.

So, let’s look at the Hierarchy of Evidence. Now, at the top, there should be meta-analyses and systematic reviews. So, make sure if you’re looking at one of the images at the very top, it says meta-analyses and systematic reviews. And on the bottom, it should say case reports, opinion papers and letters, YouTube videos, personal anecdotes, gut feelings, parental instincts, some guy you know, websites like Natural News, info wars, natural health warriors, collective evolution, green med info, mercola.com, and others.

Okay, so at the bottom, let’s start there. We’ve got what I just talked about, case reports. Now that’s a legitimate thing, case reports, opinion papers, and letters. That’s like, "Hey, look, this person didn’t live very long and they ate a lot of protein. So, maybe because they ate so much protein that was what caused them to die at the relatively young age of 65, let’s say. Except, what do you do there? Okay, cool, so you have an opinion, everyone has got one as the saying goes, “Everyone’s got one in addition to other parts, and they all stink.”

So, the next level from that is animal trials and in vitro studies. So, have you ever read, oh, in mouse studies, feeding them too much protein or, you know, you’ve heard about rodent studies, mouse studies or in vitro studies. So, a good example of this is when muscle cells in a petri dish in in vitro study were given glutamine, it increased muscle protein synthesis by like, 400%.

And supplement companies use that information to sell glutamine as a muscle-building supplement. But the truth is, when you ingest glutamine, it actually gets absorbed by our small intestine. So, it’s a much better supplement for dealing with gut issues, in fact, that’s what I take if I’m having a bad case of gas, or diarrhea, or anything like that, I’ll take some glutamine. So, animal trials and in vitro studies, but again, like I said, they’re weak evidence. Something happens in mice when you give them something. Okay, cool, but what about what happens in humans?

So, the next thing is cross-sectional studies. Now, I’m not going to go into each of these, because to be honest, I don’t know the details, for example, cross-sectional studies, it’s not what I like to read. Up from that is case-controlled studies, now cohort studies, that’s epidemiological evidence. So, for example, the reason that we know exercise is so powerful is because of cohort studies. It’s like, whoa, people who exercise this amount, they’re having these effects, it seems like they live a lot longer, they have a less chronic disease.

And then they started doing what is called randomized control trials on exercise to figure out exactly what was happening with exercise, so epidemiological studies or cohort studies.  Then up from that, we have a randomized control trial. So, let’s take the question that Trina brought up, how do we know if high protein intake causes you to die sooner? Well, what would we do to test that? Would we read a book with some doctor who gave his opinion? Could be beneficial, but that’s not science, that’s opinion. And that’s like some guy named John, it doesn’t matter.

So, what we do is this, we take a group of people, and we randomize the trial. Now, what does that mean, randomize? What do you mean by that? So, let’s say we take a group of people, and let’s say we take 100 people, and we have two groups; one group, we’re going to give them the protein, and this is going to be a long study, let’s say 100-year study. We’ll talk about that in a second because that’s not going to happen.

But anyway, we give one group of people protein, and the second group, we give them a placebo, but it’s actually just something else, in fact, it’s got no nutrition at all. And how do we know who to put into the group? Well, we randomize it, we randomly collect a group of people, 100 people, we randomly assign them to one of the two groups, so we end up with 50 people in one, 50 people in the other, and we also double-blind it.

So, what does double-blinding mean? Well, it means that the people who are in the groups don’t know whether they’re getting the protein supplement or the placebo. And also, the researchers don’t know. So, both the study participants and the researchers both have no idea who’s getting the protein, who’s not. They don’t know what group is in what group. Who’s in what group and what they’re getting. Are you with me so far? That’s a randomized control trial.

And then at the top of that, we have meta-analyses and systematic reviews. Now, what is that? Well, those are groups of studies… So, let’s say we’ve got a bunch of cohort studies or a bunch of randomized control trials, what is better than a randomized control trial or a cohort study? Well, if we’ve got a bunch of cohort studies or a bunch of randomized control trials, so that instead of just saying, “Hey, there’s one study that shows this,” it’s like, “Hey, guess what, we have 30 studies.” Let’s collect the data from the 30 studies, let’s run the numbers, and let’s see how statistically… let’s see the size-effect of what we are testing, in other words, how big is the effect? In other words, you might find that, okay, yeah, well, we found that, for example, taking this idea that when we run this 100-year study, with these double-blinded placebo control groups, one gets a protein, one doesn’t. We noticed that the effect size is they live two years less, the people who eat the protein live two years less.

So, it’s not really a big effect, right? If they live 10 years less, or even five years less, but lower, let’s say six months less, or a year. I want to say this to just to put this into context for you, I’m not the best person to ask about breaking down scientific studies, and even talk about all the different studies, in fact, that would be a great interview. We could have someone on here to discuss that. Actually, if you want to look up Alan Aragon’s first interview on my podcast, we talked a bit about meta-analyses, we talked about the Hierarchy of Scientific Evidence.

But I’m doing my best here because you asked me, and I don’t have any expert here to ask, so I’m doing my best. So, meta-analyses and systematic reviews look at a bunch of studies testing the same thing, and they try to figure out okay, what is the effect size? How big is the effect? If you live six months less, then does that really matter? And they also test this statistical significance? Did the people who live six months less, was it statistically significant?

Was if only 1% of people who live six months last? Or was it 20% of people? This is the Hierarchy of Scientific Evidence. I did my best job to kind of explain it to you in the way that I understand it. Again, people who have a PhD, or perhaps an MD and they regularly read scientific studies, they’re going to be better qualified to break this down. But I gave you a pretty solid foundation of what these things are.

Now, I can’t talk to you about all the different methods that get used, and I can’t even tell you about the cross-sectional studies or case-control studies. I don’t read much of those, to be honest, and that’s why I look at a lot of cohort studies and a lot of randomized control trials. So, breaking that all down, are you thoroughly confused? I hope not. I hope you’re still with me. Now, what are you supposed to take away?

Well, I hope what you’re taking away is this, it doesn’t matter what a doctor says, it doesn’t matter what a high school dropout says – and now, I graduated high school – but what matters is what does the evidence say? Because what the doctor is giving you isn’t even a case report. I mean, from what you said, it’s his opinion. So, opinions don’t really matter, right. Let’s say that it’s not that it doesn’t matter, let’s say it’s really weak evidence.

And this is a huge point of controversy between people who practice medicine versus people who do studies, you see this raging back and forth, because clinicians, in other words, doctors who are in practice, or PhDs who are in practice, sometimes see things work in their clinic, and it’s not backed up by what the doctors and PhDs who conduct research say, or what their research says, what the best evidence says. And so you’ll get this back and forth.

So, let me ask you now, what are you taking away from what I’m saying here? And by the way, I’m not saying opinions don’t matter. I got a ton of opinions about training, about how to deal with people. Now, it’s mostly psychological that I have the opinions about, it’s mostly the application, not the sci… I don’t disagree with any of the scientific studies on nutrition, for example, especially with the ideas that have the strongest evidence.

For example, calories make you fat—lots of evidence. There are not only randomized control trials, cohort studies, there are meta analyses, systematic reviews. I mean, there is a lot of evidence for that. Carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis, hmm, very weak, weak evidence.

 

So, that’s something to understand, is if you really want to understand nutrition or let’s say, longevity, you stop reading books, don’t read books. I don’t read books. People told me to read books.

The other day, I’m like, “Wow, you don’t understand who I am, I don’t read books. Books are for marketing purposes.” I’m not saying there are not some good books out there, but I’ll tell you, my biggest piece of advice, don’t listen to books, read studies. What’s the problem? Studies are boring to read, but guess what? That’s where you find the best information. I read studies, folks, I don’t listen to some bro talk. I don’t care if they’re a doctor or not, it doesn’t matter.

Plenty of doctors say things that go against what the strongest evidence says, and it’s like, “Why are you doing that?” Either because you’re messed up emotionally, and you can’t think critically? Or maybe you go against the grain, or you don’t know how to interpret the research. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. So, anyway, I hope that is helpful.

So, Hierarchy of Scientific Evidence. So, stop reading books, and start reading studies, that’s what I would tell you. But again, that’s not what the average person is going to do. So, in that case, what can you do? Well, you’ve got to find people who you trust. If you come back to this podcast, I’m assuming there’s a certain level of trust that you have for me. And I want to share this with you.

We’re in this climate where everybody wants to write a book, everybody wants to have a podcast, and I totally get it. Podcasting or writing books is great for your business. It gets you out there, it gets people to know you, it’s easier to have a successful business, and not to mention, you make an impact in people’s lives.

Personally, I get off on that. It does something for me. I love to speak in conferences and do talks, and I keynoted conferences before; I love doing that. And in part, because I get to help people, in part because I like doing performances, I like that. And I’m saying that because a lot of other people like it, too. It’s just the way that I’ve gone about things here is, if you’ve noticed, you see some of the people who I have on my show, I don’t go for the high profile, most popular folks.

And there’s a reason for that, because I think they’re better at marketing instead of information, and I don’t mind debating them, but I don’t even want to have that type of conversation on here. Now maybe in the future, I do, we’ll see. But right now, I just want…I will tell you this, a lot of the people who I interview is because I personally want to learn from them. And so if I haven’t had someone on this podcast, it’s not because I can’t get them on the podcast, we hit 100,000 downloads per month, recently. We’re doing well, we can get people on the show. It’s because I don’t want to promote them. I get hit up all the time. I really curate here.

Now, I hope you appreciate that. I don’t know whether you appreciate it or not, because we don’t talk, but I really hope you appreciate that. I try to have the people who I want to learn from on here. Because the truth is, I’m kind of an average person as well. I don’t have a PhD, I’m not a medical doctor. But I love learning from people who do have a high level of education in this stuff and can break things down, whether they have a PhD or not, whether they can break it down, and whether they’re nuanced enough to get into the details.

Let me change gears a little bit here and then we’ll wrap things up. I want to talk about this protein thing, and I want to read something from a study for you. Now, I’m trying to figure out what type of study this is. So, it’s The Impact of Dietary Protein Intake on Longevity and Metabolic Health. So, I’m just going to read this stuff for you, because it’s not super long. Let me see here.

So, here’s the situation, “Lifespan and metabolic health are influenced by dietary nutrients. A recent study showed that reduced protein intake or a low protein, high carbohydrate diet, plays a critical role in longevity/metabolic health.” But what they’re not telling you, by the way, is that those studies are done in animals. And if we go back to the Hierarchy of Evidence, where are animal trials? Well, they’re right above case reports and opinions and letters. So, they’re right above Dr. Joe Bob’s opinion.

“Hey, Dr. Joe Bob, do you think we should eat protein, man." Sorry, I’m from the south, so I can do that, even though I’m from Miami, so I can talk like that. So, it’s just a step above that. So, there is some evidence showing that but it’s animal studies.

And what the thing is, by the way, when it comes to talking about protein, we’re really talking about methionine or branched-chain amino acids. We’re not talking about all protein. In fact, glycine, which is another amino acid that is found in collagen protein, does not cause problems with longevity.

So, anyway, let’s get back to the abstract. “Additionally, specific amino acids including methionine or branched-chain amino acids are associated with the regulation of lifespan/aging and metabolism through multiple mechanisms. Therefore, methionine or branched-chain amino acid restriction may lead to benefits on longevity and metabolic health.” Keywords, “may lead” we don’t fucking know, but they may lead.

“Moreover, epidemiological studies show that a high intake of animal protein, particularly red meat, which contains high levels of methionine and branched-chain amino acids may be related to the promotion of age-related diseases. Therefore, a low animal protein diet, particularly a diet low in red meat, may provide health benefits. However, malnutrition, including sarcopenia, and frailty, due to inadequate protein intake is harmful to longevity and metabolic health, therefore, further study is necessary to elucidate the specific restriction levels of individual amino acids that are most effective for longevity and metabolic health in humans.”

Now, let’s get down to business folks. The reality here is this; we’ve got animal studies showing that methionine restriction and/or branched-chain amino acid restriction… By the way branched-chain amino acids are leucine, isoleucine, and valine if I remember, or is it isovaline. So, it’s like three amino acids, leucine isoleucine, and I think it is isovaline. I don’t pay attention to this because this is like the details that you learn and then you forget, because they’re just not that important.

Okay, so restriction in animals shows that animals live a longer life. Are you a rodent?  No. Are you a horse? Are you a fruit fly? No, you’re a human being. So, what are human beings really dealing with? Well, if you caught that one part, malnutrition, including sarcopenia, and frailty, due to inadequate protein intake is harmful to longevity and metabolic health. What are people suffering from?

Now there are studies to back this up, but I just want you to use the powers of observation. What are people suffering from? People are suffering from what in the modern world? Is it all these jacked, lean muscular 80 and 90-year-olds who are dropping dead because they ate too much protein? Is that what we’re seeing? No, that’s not what we’re seeing, okay? It’s not what we’re seeing.

Right now, I want you to understand, if you don’t want to move to Sardinia, Italy, or to Guanacaste in Costa Rica, to live a very simple life in a more natural life, where you can probably live to, I don’t know, in your 80s, 90s, 100s, depending on your genetics, and depending, of course, on also good access to medical care. You’re living in the modern world, where you sit too much, you eat too much. What do you think is going to take you out?

And again, we’re talking about healthy people, people who don’t have a diagnosis of heart disease, who don’t have a diagnosis of cancer. I know what I’m betting on, I know where I’m putting my chips. And I’ll tell you, you know what does have…we’re talking about methionine restriction and branched-chain amino acid restriction, and how it’s not proven in humans. It’s just some interesting things that may or may not be relevant. You know what is 100% connected—let’s say strong evidence connected with longevity? Muscle mass. What else? Upper body strength and leg strength.

In the Hierarchy of Evidence, those things have stronger evidence than protein restriction. So what I’m trying to tell you, folks, is people don’t know the answer to this. I’ll read the last part of that abstract there. “Therefore, further study is necessary to elucidate the specific restriction level of individual amino acids that are most effective for longevity and metabolic health in humans.” We don’t know.

So, anybody who tells you that they know about protein restriction and longevity, they’re giving you their opinion. And if they say that it is not, they’re lying, because they don’t know. Nobody knows. And that’s kind of a hard place to be, right? But that’s where we’re at.

Give another 10 or 20 years. I know you want the answer now. We all want the answers now. But the reality is we’re many years away from answering that question. But the questions that we have answers to, the situation that we know that we can do something about and that people are suffering from is sarcopenia and frailty due to—it’s not just…they say inadequate protein intake here, but protein intake is only part of it, you’ve got to stay active, you’ve got to stay strong, and certainly, protein helps to maintain muscle mass.

In fact, as you get older, if we’re talking about sarcopenia and frailty here, protein becomes more important, because as you get older—now, this, again, is proven, this has strong evidence, very strong evidence, we start to develop what’s called anabolic resistance, which means the same amount of lifting weights, the same amount of protein, it just doesn’t have an effect like it used to. For a person in their 80s, it’s going to be very different than for a person who is my age, 44.

So, what do you take away from what I’m saying right now? What I’m really breaking down for you is I want the answers just as much as you, and I talked to some of the smartest people who I think are the smartest in the world, about this, and this is what I got from them. So, people who are doing research on longevity. And so, episodes to listen to listen to; my episodes with Stuart Phillips.

Don’t read books on longevity, folks. Nobody knows the answer, they only have ideas. And some of them might be right, to be honest, about the longevity thing and protein. If it is right, it’s only right in context, meaning most people are too fat and too sedentary. So, by telling people who are out of shape, who are more out of shape than they should be, fatter than they should be, to eat less protein because they might develop some disease, that’s just not something I would ever get behind.

Now, if we’re talking about, hey, you’re lean, you’re strong, you’ve got good muscle mass, now you want to look at restricting protein in your diet, or specifically methionine and branched-chain amino acid, protein sources that are high in methionine and branched-chain amino acids, okay.

And then you have to, okay, well, do you lose strength when you start to change out? Do you lose muscle mass? Because guess what, as you get older, it’s actually better to have a higher BMI, it is better to have more weight on your body because you’re more able to weather diseases. So, if you get sick with COVID or another virus, and you lose some muscle mass, you don’t die from the wasting. Or if you get cancer, and you’ve got to go through chemo, you don’t die from the wasting.

So, anyway, I get passionate about this, because I get annoyed with all the information out there and all the people that should be giving better information, to be honest, they should tell you, “Hey, listen, we don’t really know the answers.” That’s what this doctor should have said, “We don’t really know the answers, but there’s some evidence that shows that restricting protein sources…” And again, I’m going to harp on this because it’s a very important nuance, protein with high methionine and branched-chain amino acids, in other words, your red meats, your chickens, your fishes.

Organ meats have less methionine and branched-chain amino acids. So, if you want to eat collagen protein, it’s not going to have the same effect. It’s very low in methionine and branched-chain amino acids. In fact, if you were to exclusively rely on collagen protein, that would be a terrible mistake, but anyway, for another podcast.

So, anyway, that’s the situation, folks. I know it was a long conversation, but I want you to understand all the nuances here because people aren’t giving you the nuances. I could have just said, “No, he’s wrong.” “Okay, wrong about what? How is he wrong?” Or I could have said, “Yeah, he’s right.” But the fact is, it’s a lot of grey. And that’s what we do on this podcast, we have those tougher conversations. We put the mental work, and emotional work, really, to figure out, okay, well, what is the strength of evidence here? How does it compare to the other things that we have evidence for? That’s how hard work, folks, and that is no average person who’s going to do that. And that’s why I’m so passionate about doing this podcast.

So, I hope you enjoy today, I’m going to kind of wrap up now. We’ve been talking about this for a while, and I think you got the gist. But I hope you learned how to think about this stuff better, especially with a Hierarchy of Evidence. In fact, I will tell you, what is the one thing that you can take away from this episode today, and take into all the other books or episodes that you’re listening to, all the other podcasts and blogs, you’re looking at? What can you take away from what we talked about?

Go do that, folks, because that’s what I want you to be. I want you to be informed. I want you to be asking these questions like I asked. I don’t want you to take someone’s word for it just because they’ve got a couple of letters after their name. We’re past the point where that means anything.

It is all about the Hierarchy of Evidence and the people who are willing to sit there and have the hard conversations to tease out the level of evidence, the effect size, the statistical significance, and how it really matters for how most of us really live our lives.

That’s it for today, I hope you enjoyed it. I will talk to you on Monday. So, have a great weekend. Love you a lot and keep critical out there. Talk soon!

 

Ted Ryce is a high-performance coach, celebrity trainer, and a longevity evangelist. A leading fitness professional for over 24 years in the Miami Beach area, who has worked with celebrities like Sir Richard Branson, Rick Martin, Robert Downey, Jr., and hundreads of CEOs of multimillion-dollar companies. In addition to his fitness career, Ryce is the host of the top-rated podcast called Legendary Life, which helps men and women reclaim their health, and create the body and life they deserve.

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