#168 Importance of Muscle and Protein with Dr Gabrielle Lyon

Gabrielle Lyon (0:00)

You know, we all joke and talk about snowflakes, right? People are kind of wimpy. That's a very real problem, and it truly does filter into the individuals.

We train less as we age. You know, you don't want to hurt yourself, you don't want to... You know, there's just things, and it's almost a complacency and a mediocrity that takes over. And I think that that's the case of death. I think that you have to maintain your capacity. You have to continue to train. If things hurt, you have to find alternative ways.

But the worst thing someone could do is to begin to limit their activity.

SPEAKER_2 (0:36)

Do you want to know what it is?

Siim Land (0:39)

Body Mind Empowerment.

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Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:47)

Everything the body needs.

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Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:52)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land and our guest today is Gabrielle Lyon. Dr. Lyon is a functional medicine physician specializing in muscle centric medicine. She leverages evidence based medicine with emerging cutting edge science to restore metabolism, balance hormones and optimize body composition.

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Gabrielle Lyon (1:48)

Thank you. I'm really glad that we were able to make this work. I'm looking forward to it.

Siim Land (1:52)

Yeah, like we've made it. I think like it's been over a year since the first time we tried to do a podcast. But both of us have been busy and I actually saw that you got a child and meanwhile, so it took a while, but it's finally happened.

Gabrielle Lyon (2:06)

I have, she's six months old now.

Siim Land (2:08)

That's really awesome.

But what is muscle centric medicine? How would you like to define it?

Gabrielle Lyon (2:17)

Muscle centric medicine is the concept that muscle is the largest organ in the body. And I want to emphasize the word organ. We typically think about muscle as it relates to locomotion and training and exercise. But actually muscle is so much more than that. It is an endocrine organ. It's literally the largest organ that secretes proteins.

One of those, the group is called myokines that actually travel throughout the body and are anti-inflammatory.

Muscle is also the largest metabolic organ. It is largely responsible for resting metabolic rate. As you know, that's the amount of calories that we need to just maintain life. It is one of the largest sites for glucose disposal. Everybody talks about carbohydrates and glucose and a very large site for fatty acid oxidation. So essentially, muscle centric medicine is really targeted on keeping this organ of longevity optimized.

Siim Land (3:22)

Yeah, that's a really good perspective because a lot of people wouldn't even think of it, especially like doctors. They're kind of not even prescribing anything that would promote muscle mass and just that sort of thing related to it, like improved glucose disposal and those things.

And it does make sense that it's like a big organ. I think a lot of times people say that the skin is your biggest organ, but if you look at the mass, like the amount of mass or weight, then muscle is by far much larger.

Gabrielle Lyon (3:56)

And it's really interesting because the society that we live in, everybody is chasing adiposity. Everybody is chasing obesity, the concept of being over fat.

And if you continue to focus on a problem, the only thing you get is more of the problem.

But if we switch the focus to being under-muscled and really focus on that being the issue and building healthy, strong muscle so that your metabolism is optimized so that your capacity to age well, this is really the solution. And I truly believe that one of the issues with all the illnesses like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, which is type 3 diabetes of the brain, all of this stems in a defect in the muscle tissue first before you become fat. So it's actually a defect in the ability to utilize substrates, whether it's fat, carbohydrates or proteins. And the issue is muscle first. The muscle becomes impaired and then you get fat and then obesity becomes an issue and then you get dyslipidemia.