Muscle is the Organ for Longevity with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon

Gabrielle Lyon (0:00)

This is a little controversial.

Mary Claire Haver (0:01)

Let's do it.

Gabrielle Lyon (0:02)

I do not think that body fat is an incredibly relevant biomarker.

Mary Claire Haver (0:06)

Me neither.

Gabrielle Lyon (0:06)

The under-arching organ is muscle. What we saw was the more healthy muscle mass someone had, the better their survivability. Blood markers, glucose regulation, insulin, healthy muscle really seem like the organ of longevity.

Mary Claire Haver (0:20)

A 30-minute walk a day can decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes by 50%.

Gabrielle Lyon (0:24)

But do we think walking is enough? The act of training produces hundreds of different myokines, all of which do different things. We only know about 5%.

Mary Claire Haver (0:33)

The American woman is consuming 50, 60, 70 grams of protein per day, and you're saying that's not enough.

Gabrielle Lyon (0:39)

I actually really wanted to address this because I'm sure that you have physicians listening to your podcast.

Mary Claire Haver (0:53)

The views and opinions expressed on unPAUSED are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

For decades, women in midlife have been told to eat less, to weigh less, to take up less space, to shrink. The diet industry built a $40 billion empire on this message, and women have been chasing it for a lifetime. Smaller portions, fewer carbs, less protein, less food, less of yourself. And then perimenopause hits. The weight comes anyway. The muscle leaves, the energy collapses, the body redistributes. And the prescription from most providers is the same one that got you into this. Eat less. Here's what I know now. The crisis facing women in midlife is not too much fat. It's not enough muscle.

We're not over fat. We're under-muscled. And the difference between aging well and aging poorly, between independence at 80 and frailty at 70, between a body that can carry you through the second half of your life and one that cannot, is built on a single tissue that most women have been taught to ignore.

Skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is the largest organ in your body. It's the largest endocrine organ in your body. It releases anti-inflammatory signals every time it contracts. It is the primary site where your body disposes of glucose. It is the metabolic floor under your hormones, your bone density, your brain, your heart, your immune system, and your survival of any future illness you will ever face.

40% of women over 60 in this country are protein deficient. The average American woman consumes 60 to 70 grams of protein a day.

That is not enough to maintain muscle in a teenager, let alone in a perimenopausal woman fighting anabolic resistance and hormonal catabolic shift at the same time. We've been telling women to restrict the one nutrient their bodies need at the exact moment in life when they need it most. Today's guest has spent her career trying to fix this. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon is a board certified family physician and the founder of the Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine. She earned her undergraduate degree in human nutrition with a specialization in vitamin and mineral metabolism at the University of Illinois. She received her medical degree from the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine. She completed a combined research and clinical fellowship in geriatrics and nutritional sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the founder of Strong Medical. Her patients include world-class athletes and the most elite operators in the United States and Canadian military. She is a TEDx speaker and the author of a best-selling book, Forever Strong, and hosts a podcast of the same name. She is here today because the conversation about women in midlife has been wrong for 40 years. And she's one of the few voices in this country with the credentials, the data and the courage to say so. I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause practitioner. I'm also an adjunct professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Welcome to unPAUSED, the podcast where we cut through the silence and talk about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life.

Because there was so much to cover with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, we have broken this episode into two parts. This is part one, and we will publish part two later this week.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, welcome to unPAUSED.

Gabrielle Lyon (4:44)

Thanks for having me.

Mary Claire Haver (4:45)

So you trained as a geriatrician, and I think in this big longevity conversation that is exploding all over social media and the press, very few people are talking about actually taking care of older patients. And I love that about you.