If You Lack Protein, It’s Really Bad- InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Episode 582
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If You Lack Protein, It’s Really Bad- InViteⓇ Health Podcast, Episode 582
Hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
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InViteⓇ Health Podcast Intro: Welcome to the InViteⓇ Health Podcast, where our degreed healthcare professionals are excited to offer you the most important health and wellness information you need to make informed choices about your health. You can learn more about the products discussed in each of these episodes and all that InViteⓇ Health has to offer at www.invitehealth.com/podcast. First time customers can use promo code PODCAST at checkout for an additional 15% off your first purchase. Let’s get started!† lack
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Jerry Hickey, Ph.: [00:00:41] Protein is the second most abundant substance in your body. After water, you know, water makes your blood and your lymphatic tissue, etc. You’re made out of protein, protein holds you together, protein allows you to function, protein gives you mobility, this is all because of protein. Every cell in your body contains protein. So if you’re not getting enough protein, bad things will definitely happen to you.† [00:01:08]
[00:01:10] So welcome to my episode. My name is Jerry Hickey. I’m a licensed pharmacist who practices nutrition. You could find all of the InVite episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast. You can also find InVite on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at InVite Health.† [00:01:30]
[00:01:31] Now, when you eat protein, and we’ll go over sources of protein and how much protein in particular people might need and if there were different forms of protein, etc. and a lot about protein supplements we’ll go into that. But protein is composed of amino acids, and when you eat the protein, your digestive juices, you’re proteases, they break it down and release the individual amino acids. Many of these combine in particular ways to make basically almost everything. So here’s a short list, and I emphasize that a short list of what protein is needed for. It’s needed for your energy and metabolism for your thyroid to function. That’s at the base basis of your metabolism. It requires tyrosine to function. You need it for mental health and mental function and mental energy. Many neurotransmitters are made out of amino acids released from protein like dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. Epinephrine, if you’re listing in England or Ireland, you call it adrenaline, serotonin, melatonin. And also individual amino acids function as neurotransmitters in the brain, like glutamine and gamma aminobuteric acid.† [00:02:55]
[00:02:55] So you have to have protein for your brain. Plus your brain is made out of protein. For instance, your gray matter and your brain has a big protein content. It’s made out of collagen and the barrier that keeps nasty things out of your brain called a blood brain barrier. That’s that’s a lot of protein in that too. Hormones are made out of many hormones are made out of protein such as insulin and growth factors like insulin type growth factor one and insulin type growth factor two. Enzymes, now what is an enzyme? Enzyme speed up reaction, so most people, when they think of enzymes, they think of digestive enzymes that break down your food. If you didn’t release digestive enzymes, food would basically be like a big kind of rock thing that you couldn’t digest. So enzymes speed up reactions, but there’s thousands of enzymes inside you that speed up energy reactions, detoxification reactions and seeing and thinking, etc. So enzymes are frequently made out of amino acids. Immunity, you need protein to make antibodies and for the immune system to function and to make immune cells in general. Detoxification, to break down chemicals, to get rid of old used drugs, to get rid of hormones, etc. You need protein to get rid of toxins, you need protein. To protect your brain, your eyes, your lungs, your red blood cells, your immune cells, your white blood cells, your kidneys, your liver, etc. You need protein and make something called glutathione, which is kind of like the mother of all antioxidants. You need protein to make lipoproteins like low density lipoprotein a type of cholesterol. So you need you need this to carry nutrients around the body and to protect yourself from heart disease and to create cholesterol for your cells and your brain and your hormones. Blood proteins, there’s a bunch of blood proteins. They deliver things throughout the body, but they do more than that. For instance, the most common blood protein would be albumin, serum albumin. We’ll go into that.† [00:04:59]
[00:05:01] So you need it, oh, you need it for your blood vessel walls, you need to make organs and tissues, your skin, your hair, your nails, your bones, your joints, your ligaments, your tendons, your valves and your heart. And the filters in your kidneys and your spinal tissues and your meniscus cushion, your jaw and your knees, they’re all made out of protein. So if you lack protein, it’s really bad. And that’s the name of this episode. If you lack protein, bad things will happen to you. It’s not that they may happen, they will happen.† [00:05:39]
[00:05:41] So what are some signs that you like protein? Well, you have an increase in your appetite. There are certain things that if you lack them, your brain keeps you hungry and hopes that you keep on consuming enough food, that you get enough of these things that are required for your body, like calcium. If you lack calcium, you’re always hungry. But also, if you lack protein, your body requires a lot of protein on a daily basis. If you don’t consume enough protein, your brain stimulates your appetite in an attempt to boost your protein consumption. This is from the University of Oxford, Oxford University in England, one of the best universities on the planet. But you also lose muscle. I mean, a lot of people know this by now. If you don’t consume adequate protein, your body borrows the amino acids it needs from your muscles. So your muscles act like a savings bank for for amino acids and protein. This is to make essential substances that are important for life, such as hormones, immune cells, neurotransmitters, etc.. They’re more important to your you’re staying alive than a large muscle. This is the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. This is especially important. Tufts University has done a lot of research on something called Sarcopenia, which is that severe wasting and loss of muscle that leads to fragility and diseases in aging people. And we’ve done podcast episodes on Sarcopenia, so people really start losing muscle. You can lose a lot of muscle if you’re not exercising in your forties and fifties, but it accelerates in the sixties and seventies. So by the time you’re 70, you could have lost like 60% of your muscle and strength.† [00:07:24]
[00:07:26] If you lack protein in your diet, people can see it, you can see it, you could see it in the mirror because your skin will get really dry, your nails will stop growing, they’ll become brittle, they’ll break, your hair dries up and it thins. In fact, you can lose your hair color. So your skin, nails and hair are pretty much made out of a protein called collagen. About 70% of your skin and almost as much of your hair and nails was made out of collagen protein. And when you eat protein, this is important, we’ll go into this a little more at the end of the podcast episode, when we talk about different types of protein supplements, when you eat protein, a young person converts that to collagen. This slows down after you stop growing. You need less collagen according to your body, but it’s not quite true. So tissues around the body really suffer because they have a huge collagen content. We’ll go into that.† [00:08:20]
[00:08:22] So your nails will stop growing and they’ll become brittle and break, your skin dries, it’s easier to wrinkle, your hair thins, your hair color declines. This is University of Portsmouth, which is in England. You have an increased risk of bone fracture, absolutely, yeah. Inside your bones, there’s this matrix of protein and 90% of this matrix, the organic part of the bone is made out of collagen protein. And then calcium as calcium appetite attaches to the collagen. And so your bone is 36% collagen protein. So this creates the bone substance that the calcium and all the other minerals attach to. This is from the University of Connecticut at stores. I know all these things already, but it’s nice that I can quote from different universities and research institutions to really anchor my point. So obviously you’re going to have an increased risk of a bone fracture, if you’ve lacked protein long term. This is true, in fact, there’s a number of research institutions, the University of Illinois, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, that actually came out and said, hey, listen, you can’t just take a drug if you’re losing bone. You know, if you have osteopenia or osteoporosis, you can’t just take calcium and vitamin D, you need collagen to be part of your plan, because if you lack collagen, there’s no place for the calcium to go and attach to. I mean, it’s the same thing in your knee joint, your knee joint is 67% collagen that’s what things like glucosamine and chondroitin insert themselves into the build knee cartilage and to protect your knee from arthritis. You also have an increased risk of infection and you also have an increased risk of severe infections, if you lack, protein. This is according to the CDC in Atlanta and Texas A&M University. Well, yeah, antibodies and immune cells are made out of protein. So in one study from Tufts University, all the women on a low protein diet had a quick decline in their immune system function simply by having low protein in the diet. I mean, it was within weeks their immune system suffered. But here’s another thing, you develop edema if you lack protein, edema is swelling, so you get swollen, puffy skin.† [00:10:43]
[00:10:45] So the reason for this is if you lack protein in your diet, the proteins in your blood decline, about half of the proteins in your blood are called albumins, a family of proteins, they carry things like they deliver drugs, etc., and nutrients. But they also control the volume of fluids inside your body to a degree. Albumin creates this osmotic type pressure that sucks excess fluid out of your tissues and cells. So if you lack albumin, the the fluids will eventually build up in your tissues and you’ll swell up. Plus the albumin carries things throughout your body. I already said that. Like it’ll deliver calcium, it’ll deliver sodium, it’ll deliver potassium, it delivers fats and hormones. In fact, even your thyroid hormone and your vitamin D are carried on albumin to a degree.† [00:11:40]
[00:11:42] So by the way, that that pressure gradient that takes fluid out of your cells and organs is called oncotic pressure.† [00:11:49]
[00:11:50] Now, another thing that happens if you lack protein is you develop anemia. First of all, you need protein to create hemoglobin, that’s the red stuff within your red blood cells, that’s the stuff that carries oxygen. But without protein, your metabolic rate declines, your metabolic rate, your thyroid function declines. This affects the kidneys and the kidneys stop creating a hormone called erythropoietin. Erythropoietin released from the kidneys signals your bone marrow to create red blood cells. So if you don’t eat protein, kidneys don’t release erythropoietin as a consequence of that and you become anemic. You also have poor healing because your tissues are made out of protein so it slows down healing a great deal. It really affects whole healing, I already said broken bones. But fatty liver, this is very interesting, lipoproteins like LDL cholesterol and HDL cholesterol are made to a degree out of protein like LDL has less protein, low density lipoprotein, so it’s less heavy because there’s less protein in it. That’s one reason why it could be a little bit tricky for the heart, a little bit bad because it’s more fat, less protein. Then there’s HDL, the good one, the high density lipoprotein. When it’s in the correct chemical structure, it protects you from heart disease. It does something called reverse cholesterol transport and it reduces inflammation in your blood vessel walls. That’s why you want high levels of HDL in the correct structure the correct structure is affected by phospholipids and things like beans and fish and by fish oils, they make it in the correct structure. So HDL works better when you eat your fish. So the thing is that, and your beans, so the thing is, an HDL is high density lipoprotein it’s less fat, more protein that’s one reason why it’s not as toxic to the heart arteries. But if you don’t have enough protein, you don’t make these fatty substances and fats build up in your liver. So not eating enough protein actually leads to fatty liver.† [00:13:50]
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[00:13:52] So lacking protein is terrible for you and your health and your future. So let’s go to a protein, rich foods. Let’s look at fish, fish has protein fish and shellfish has protein. Let’s look at salmon because it’s a great fish. I always like the wild salmon. Eight ounces gives you approximately 50 grams of protein. I mean, for that’s a good amount of protein. But it also gives you minerals such as magnesium and potassium and phosphorus and a little bit of calcium. It gives you some vitamins like vitamin D and vitamin A and niacin, niacin is nicotinic acid, it’s vitamin B3. It’s one of the strongest things for slowing down the aging process that’s involved with detoxification. It’s involved in energy production, but it’s also one of the strongest anti-cancer things that you can have in your body. So, you know, when you eat salmon, you’re getting a rich good thing, but you’re getting fish oils. And what makes salmon pink? A carotenoid called astaxanthin, which is a powerful protector of your eyes and your brain and your heart and your skin and your digestive tract, etc. So salmon, good.† [00:14:56]
[00:14:57] Chicken, eight ounces of chicken has 40 to 45 grams of protein, but has all the good things to like it, it has carnitine. Carnitine is transferred into- transformed into acetyl l-carnitine for your memory and for brain energy and for a good mood, and to prevent nerve pain and carnitine in the heart and muscles allows them to function. And then there’s carnosine, carnosine, carnitine and carnosine are named after carnivores carney meat. So Carnosine helps with healing, slows the aging process, it’s important for your immune system. That’s why chicken soup is a kind of they consider it like home grown penicillin and has carnosine. When you’re sick and you eat chicken soup, you get some protein, you get some carnitine, you get some carnosine, which is good for the immune system. It helps you fight off infections a little bit.† [00:15:52]
[00:15:54] Let’s move on. Legumes like tofu. Okay. Tofu is not my favorite food. Two ounces has six grams of protein. I prefer edamame, which is the soybeans, they’re still in the pod. A cup- a cup is eight ounces, has 18 grams of protein. And for all the people, that’s a good amount of protein right there at one sitting. And I’ll explain why I said that later in the program. Yogurt and cheese problem with cheese, it has cholesterol. But yogurt has good bacteria, right? Some cheeses have vitamin K2, which are good, so we’ll keep it- that’s a different podcast episode.† [00:16:32]
[00:16:32] Eggs. I get these organic free range fresh eggs from a farm near me, I live out in Suffolk County, Long Island. One egg is up to eight grams of protein, but the whites of the eggs have antiviral ingredients. Think about it, the shell is porous, it lets oxygen through. Viruses and infectious organisms can follow that. So how do you prevent the embryo in the yolk? You have to have things in the white of the eggs that trap and hold onto the viruses. So when you eat an egg, the white has some anti-viral ingredients. The yolk has lecithin, lecithin is phosphatidylcholine. It’s good for your liver, it gets fat out of your liver, it’s good for your memory, and it’s good for your muscle and nerve function. And there’s vitamin A, in the yolk, there’s Vitamin A, lutein and Zeaxanthin and riboflavin, which is vitamin B2, which are all needed for your vision and for your memory. The Lutein, Zeaxanthin and Riboflavin are native for your memory.† [00:17:32]
[00:17:34] Cereal grains like quinoa, whole wheat, rice, oatmeal. Quinoa, which has become pretty popular four ounces has four grams of protein, so there’s one gram per ounce. It’s technically not a grain because they eat the berries. So a cup, eight ounces has six grams of protein, I don’t think anybody is eating a cup of quinoa. Wheat berries. That’s the whole wheat kernel. A cup has six grams of protein. Brown rice, a cup has 4 to 5 grams of protein. Whole wheat, now, a lot of people have whole wheat. Some people can’t have it because they have celiac sprue or they might have wheat allergies or wheat sensitivity, gluten sensitivity. Whole wheat, three and a half ounces, that’s 100 grams, has 13.2 grams of protein, it’s pretty good. Nuts, like a walnut has about three grams of protein per ounce. So an ounce of walnuts a day is not a bad thing because there’s also some healthy fats that lower your cholesterol and they’re good for the heart.† [00:18:36]
[00:18:37] Let’s talk about protein supplements, whey protein. That’s like a perfect protein, I’ve done a podcast episode on whey protein like a year or two ago. It has all the essential and nonessential amino acids. Get the American whey protein, there’s been some issues with Chinese whey protein, which is the second most common source in the United States. I’ll give you for instance, this is years ago. So years ago, there was an issue some Chinese scientist found out that taken doctor protein with a chemical that fooled the testing, the chemical was cheaper than the protein. The problem was the chemical was very toxic like I believe it was causing kidney failure. So whey proteins were coming in with this toxin in them so I just been not happy with Chinese protein ever since. You can get American sourced protein, get these, get the whey protein isolate because they remove most of the fats and sugars and you get a more pure protein that way. But whey protein is a very high quality protein, if you get a good source.† [00:19:49]
[00:19:51] Tendoforte, that’s interesting, that’s a product that’s been researched in Germany, like the University of Freiburg. And what they did, they figured out what amino acids make your ligaments and tendons, ligaments hold your your bones and your joints together and the tendons attach to muscles. So they keep you standing, they keep you mobile, and they tend to dry out and tear with age, and of course, extreme athletes frequently have problems with their ankle tendon or their anterior cruciate ligament behind their knee, like the football running backs and receivers, etc., or, you know, tendinitis in their forearm, you know, like golfers have a tennis elbow. So the researchers found out that there are specific amino acids that create tendons and ligaments and they made a product called tendoforte. We have it in something called Flex Hx, I take it daily because these ligaments and tendons really dictate your ability to be mobile and to exercise, etc. And having ligament or tendon problems with age is becoming more common, especially with sports and exercise, etc. And because people are living longer.† [00:21:09]
[00:21:10] Then there’s collagen, we’re made out of collagen, it’s the second most common ingredient in the human body, I think it’s something like 35% of the human body. So all of the proteins in human body, most of it is collagen. Collagen is like 70% of your skin, hair and nails, it’s 67% of your joint cartilage, it’s 36% of your bone, makes you spinal tissue, it creates the meniscus that hold your knees in place and cushion your knees and they’re important for cushioning your jaw, you have menisci in your jaw. So there’s a lot of tissue, the spinal tissue, parts of the brain, the barrier that protects the brain, blood vessel walls they’re all made out of collagen. Collagen production declines with age so I think older people, especially, it’s very helpful to take collagen. Younger women are catching on to it now, like in their forties, etc., because it helps with wrinkling and helps your nails grow and prevents them from getting brittle. And it’s really good for your hair.† [00:22:08]
[00:22:10] Then there is the vegetarian type protein. So the most common one is soy. Not a perfect protein, but it’s pretty good. It’s a legume, but some people don’t want soy protein for whatever reason. There is a different legume protein on the market called pea protein so you could get pea protein. There’s rice protein, there’s pumpkin protein but that’s really not very common, it’s not well known. So what about your protein requirements? Well, it depends on your age, it depends on your weight, it depends on your level of activity. So most adults, you know, 60 to 80 grams is a good amount of protein. Athletes need more. They have a higher requirement, they’re using up their protein. But the amount they require, the expert opinion varied. For instance, the American College of Sports Medicine says a 180 pound athlete should have about 110 grams of protein every day. So that’s a little less than four ounces, where the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 180 pound athlete would need 160 grams a day, which is over five ounces of protein. Now, so athletes need more, that’s for sure. How much more? That’s still being figured out but, you know, if the typical person has 70 or 80 grams a day, an athlete certainly needs over 100 grams a day. Elderly people, we don’t utilize protein very well. I say that because I’m going to be 69, so we cannot absorb it and utilize it very efficiently. So a certain amount of research indicates that older people can only utilize 20 grams of protein per sitting, which is like a half a serving of chicken or a little less than half a serving of salmon, like, you know, three and a half ounces of salmon. So I tell older the people, you really have to split up your protein, you really need protein with breakfast, lunch and dinner, you might even really want to consider protein supplements. For instance, that tendoforte for your, ligaments and tendons, collagen for your skin, hair, nails, bones and joints and other tissues. As well as eating regular proteins like salmon and beans and chicken and things like that.† [00:24:32]
[00:24:34] Otherwise, older people could suffer from sarcopenia. So Sarcopenia is a severe loss of muscle, which leads to frailty syndrome and fragility and leads to diseases of aging. So that could lead to broken bones and anemia and poor metabolism. So older people really need to watch their protein intake. And of course, if a kid doesn’t get enough protein, they fail to thrive. They don’t grow as well as they should. I mean, you see people who have a good protein diet in general, they do better with growth. So older people and athletes need more protein than the general public. Protein is very important, if you don’t know much about protein, feel free to call our nutritionists, there’s no charge for that.† [00:25:20]
[00:25:21] So thanks for joining me today on the InVite Health podcast. You can find all of our podcasts for free, all the episodes wherever you listen to podcast or just go to invitehealth.com/podcast and please subscribe and leave a review. That’s very helpful. You can also find InVite, if you like, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at InVite Health. Thanks for listening, hope to see you next time on another episode. Jerry Hickey signing off.† [00:25:21] lack
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