AMA #62: Protein's impact on appetite and weight management, and uric acid's link to disease and how to manage levels

**Peter Attia** (0:10)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com/subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything episode number 62 I'm once again joined by my co-host Nick Stenson. In today's episode, we're going to focus on two different topics, uric acid and protein. Now we've spoken about both of these in prior episodes, but today's conversation focuses on a different aspect of them. So when it comes to uric acid, we discuss how one should look at uric acid levels, and what the relationship is between your uric acid level and various disease states, most notably, of course, cardiovascular disease. What we try to establish here is not the obvious correlation between high levels of uric acid and disease, but more the idea of causality. Because of course, if uric acid is causally related to cardiovascular disease, then lowering uric acid would indeed lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. We then move on to protein, which of course is a topic we've covered many times in the past, but here we talk about it in a different way, which is we ask the question and explore all of the literature that examines the relationship between protein and appetite and its impact on satiation. We discuss what happens when someone is not getting enough protein and what to understand about the relationship between protein deficiency and obesity. We discuss how much protein someone might need to avoid deficiency, which amino acids are important, and how one might compare protein sources. If you are a subscriber and want to watch the full video of this podcast, you can find it on the show notes page. And if you're not a subscriber, you can watch a sneak peek of the video on our YouTube page. So without further delay, I hope you enjoy AMA number 62

**Nick Stenson** (2:20)
Peter, welcome to an AMA. How you doing?

**Peter Attia** (2:23)
I'm good, thanks for having me back. By the way, you never comment when I say that. Thanks for having me back. Like it's such a stupid thing to say. I don't know why I say it.

**Nick Stenson** (2:32)
It's just natural probably for you, but yes, it's one of those, if you're not here, it's a lot different of an episode for sure. Well, speaking of that, there is something that I've been waiting to talk to you about. May or may not have been due to your fashion or lack of fashion choices. Does that help ring another bell?

**Peter Attia** (2:50)
Fanny pack.

**Nick Stenson** (2:51)
Yes. Do you want to let people know what you were rocking and how big that thing was?

**Peter Attia** (2:57)
Unless we're planning to do a dedicated AMA on the utility of the fanny pack, I don't know that we want to go down this rabbit hole.

**Nick Stenson** (3:05)
Are you worried that you have to justify it with a full 90 minute podcast to why you should be wearing that in the first place?

**Peter Attia** (3:13)
Well, I mean, north of 25,000 people voted in disfavor of the fanny pack, which, look, I would bet that the same number of people who think that the fanny pack is a faux pas are probably equal in proportion, not necessarily the same people, but equal in proportion to the number of people who think HRT causes breast cancer or TRT causes prostate cancer. And so it requires deep, thorough, nuanced discussion to explain the merits of certain approaches. And I think the fanny pack is no exception.

**Nick Stenson** (3:48)
That was quite a leap that you made there, which I didn't see coming. The biggest argument against the fanny pack that I saw was a photo where you had the big old fanny pack on and your phone in your pocket. So what's the point of the fanny pack if the phone's not even going in there?

**Peter Attia** (4:09)
That was one photo. For the most part, the phone is in the fanny pack. I think in that moment, the phone out of habit was just placed back in my pocket.

**Nick Stenson** (4:19)
It was just a weak moment on your part.

**Peter Attia** (4:22)
I mean, there is a slight friction to the fanny pack because you have to undo the zipper to put it in and then put it back in. And if you think, I'm going to use this phone again in five seconds, sometimes it's just easier to put it in your pocket.