Stop Your Muscles from Decreasing in Size & Strength with Omega 3 | Chris McGlory PhD

**Gabrielle Lyon** (0:02)
Welcome to the Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, where I believe a healthy world is based on transparent conversations.
In this episode of The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show, it is my honor and privilege to sit down with Dr. Chris McGlory. He's an assistant professor at Queen's University, Canada, having completed post-doctoral fellowships at McMaster University in Canada under the supervision of Dr. Stu Phillips. Chris specializes in the use of stable isotope tracers to track skeletal muscle protein turnover during periods of fasting, feeding, training, and immobilization. In this episode, we take his expertise and we do a very deep dive into his current research, which is focused on exploring how omega-3 fatty acid and essential amino acid intake protect against muscle disuse atrophy. Chris has published over 60 scientific papers and he has delivered numerous invited national and international presentations at many prestigious scientific meetings. This conversation was absolutely wonderful. We discussed how much omega-3 fatty acids someone should use, the mechanism of action, how it can actually protect your skeletal muscle from disuse, and what is its role in overall skeletal muscle health, and so much more. Chris is a wealth of knowledge, and again, this is a very important nutrient, omega-3 fatty acids. It's something that we can measure in your blood, and it's something you can get in the diet or take through supplementation. It's easy and the literature is just booming.
If you like this episode, please take a moment to like, subscribe, share it. We offer this education free of cost so that we can get the message out there from the people in the trenches. Dr. Chris McGlory, you are an assistant professor at Queen's University, and you completed a postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University under the supervision of the one and only Dr. Stu Phillips.
I'm really excited to have you on the show today because your work in omega-3 fatty acids and skeletal muscle health and essential amino acid intake to protect against muscle disuse atrophy is extraordinary. You really are leading and paving the way. Welcome to the show.

**Chris McGlory** (2:55)
Oh, thanks very much. And thanks for the nice introduction. I think I'm taking a lot of credit there for some other people's work as well, but very much a team effort in the human trial. So yeah, I'm looking forward to chatting a little bit about some of the work that we've done and some of the work that we're looking to do now.

**Gabrielle Lyon** (3:10)
I'm so excited. So let's dive into it. Can you give us a little bit of background how you arrived at your current research?

**Chris McGlory** (3:19)
Yeah, sure. So I did, I'm from the UK. I'm based in Canada, but I did my undergraduate and master's degrees at Liverpool John Moores University, which is probably the best sports science institute in the world, at least in my opinion. And I did it with a Graham Close and James Morton.
And both Graham and James are very interested in carbohydrate metabolism and sports performance. And, you know, I did a little bit of work there.
And then I was really fascinated by protein metabolism and learning how muscle proteins turn over. So James recommended I work with somebody in that field, such as Stuart or, you know, Luke Van Loon in Holland, but I was very lucky to land a PhD studentship with Kevin Tipton at the University of Stirling. And my intention really was to go up there and learn how to use stable isotope traces to measure muscle protein turnover after exercise. But when I got up there, Kevin and my other supervisor, Stuart Galloway, had landed a grant to look at how omega-3 fatty acids would interact with protein metabolism in the context of feeding omega-3 fatty acids and seeing how it affected muscle protein metabolism. And it kind of piqued my interest. So we did a series of studies in Stirling.
And then at the same time, we were collaborating with Dr. Stuart Phillips' lab at McMaster because Stuart had the mass specs that allowed us to measure the isotope in which we can all sample. So I went to Canada for a couple of weeks and worked there with the crew in Mark. And then when I got back to Stirling, Stuart kindly offered me the opportunity to go and learn from him a little bit more, all the clinical work in the form of a post-doc. So I went to McMaster and I spent, I'd say, five of the best years of my career with Dr. Phillips, learning lots about the clinical work and applying stable isotopes. And Stuart was also an excellent mentor and allowed me to work with other people, such as Graham Holloway, and learn from them in the surrounding area. And then a job came up at Queen's University in Canada just before the pandemic.