Top 3 Benefits of Protein (Why You Should Double Your Protein Intake)

Hey everyone, welcome to the Dr. Josh Axe Show. I am your host, Dr. Axe, and each and every week on this show, I explore the science and principles behind how to grow in body, mind, spirit, and take your health and your life to the next level. Did you know that you can burn more calories just by eating certain food?

Not only can you burn calories, but you can reverse disease, promote longevity, and look and feel younger. Today, I'm going to be exploring the importance of protein in your diet. I'll be going through exactly how much protein you could— should be consuming. Consuming on a daily basis, what times of day you most need protein, and the best sources of quality protein.

Before I dive into this though, make sure to subscribe here and hit the notification bell so you don't miss a single episode. And hey, I have covered so much on this podcast on how to heal using food as medicine and mindset medicine. Go back and search through old podcasts and YouTube videos to learn more. You might be a person saying, hey, I want to heal my thyroid.

If so, go and look up Dr. Axe thyroid. You'll find episode on that, or Dr. Axe testosterone, or Dr. Axe longevity foods, and I've probably covered the topic you're looking for. So let me be a resource for you. And again, don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss a single thing. Well, today we're going to talk about protein, and here's what protein is.

Protein is essentially the building blocks of your body. Just like I remember when I was a kid, I played with Legos and I would build various structures. Protein is a very similar thing. It's the building blocks of your body, and it specifically helps you repair tissues.

Now, when you eat protein, your body breaks it down into something called amino acids, which are these tiny blocks that help create muscle, skin, hair, organs, even enzymes that run different processes within your body. In fact, to convert certain things in your body, vitamins into usable vitamins by your body, you have to have protein.

And so your protein is used by far more than most people realize. Again, imagine a construction crew that comes in to repair damage after a storm. Protein acts like this crew fixing any damage in our muscles after exercise or daily wear and tear. Now, when people think of protein, again, they primarily think of muscles, and we're going to get into that.

But also remember that proteins make up your skin, your hair, your nails, your gut, your organs, uh, your fascia, a good majority of your body. And so we need protein. And protein actually in Latin means primary. It was believed by ancient physicians that protein was the primary nutrient we needed, macronutrient, on a regular basis.

They said it's the most important of the macronutrients, even more important than carbs and fat, some believed. Now we need all of them, but Obviously it is known as, uh, primary. Okay. As an energy source, here's the thing to know. While carbohydrates and fats are our body's primary source of energy, protein can also be converted into energy as well when the body needs it.

It's like having a backup generator for power when the main source is running low. Now, the reality is we typically don't want our body to dip into our own protein sources like our muscles, we want to keep those, which we'll go into. How do you keep the most amount of muscle and look and feel the youngest? I'm going to talk about that. Now, here's another thing to know.

Our bodies are constantly recycling proteins on a daily basis, and the proteins that we eat in our diet can be used to replace broken-down proteins in order to maintain balance. Now, this is important for everything from rebuilding mitochondria of the cell. It's important for rebuilding cellular health.

It's important for as well— your body is constantly getting rid of old cells and protein like senescent cells on a regular basis as well. And so this is why you want to be eating quality protein on a regular basis and then also making sure you're eating a lot of other anti-inflammatory foods with it. So here's how protein works in our body.

One thing to know is that your body is constantly recycling protein on a daily basis, getting rid of the old and replacing the broken proteins with new proteins via consuming protein in your diet or different types of amino acids or peptides in your diet. Here's the difference, by the way. When you look at proteins, these are longer chains of amino acids. Amino acids are singular.

And then you have peptide chains, which are chains of amino acids which aren't long enough to be called proteins. That's where when you hear something like collagen peptides or collagen protein, that's a string of amino acids that your body uses to typically create certain body structures such as skin, hair, nails, gut lining, and joints are the most common areas there.

And you have what makes up your body, both essential and non-essential amino acids. Now, essential amino acids are those that the body cannot make on its own, versus— there actually is a group in between known as sort of these conditionally essential amino acids, or partially essential, which your body can make some of but not enough. So you do have to get food.

And then you have non-essential, which means you, you, you— your body can make those. Now, I actually don't necessarily like that term because Depending on what you have going on within your body, even certain diseases, you really— all essential amino acids are essential, and you really want to be getting all in your diet for the most part.

And so I don't necessarily love that terminology, but that's what that means. Now let's talk about what amino acids do. Here's a few things to know. Amino acids can actually help you break down your food, so they can actually help with digestion. They help grow and repair your body tissue.

So if you want to build muscle, Or if you have an injury and you want to completely heal a, you know, a knee that you have injured or low back or neck issues, you need amino acids to help repair the area. Now, amino acids also make up hormones and brain chemicals like, like norepinephrine or something like dopamine. You actually need amino acids or peptides in order to do this.

They can provide a source of energy. They also help us maintain, again, muscle, skin, hair, nail health. They're also important for your immune system, and they also maintain normal digestive system function. I'll give you an example of this. Uh, peptides are very popular today, okay, like BPC-157.

Did you know that that's created in your digestive system to help you better break down and digest your food? And it's— and it helps with repair and regeneration. That's a peptide. It's made of amino acids. So it's a, it's a form of a— Protein. It's a type of protein per se. And so we have to have amino acids and peptides and proteins in order to be healthy.

So let me answer this question because this is one of the most common questions I get on a regular basis. Dr. Axe, how much protein should I consume on a daily basis? Well, the recommended daily allowance for most adults is around, uh, the recommendation is around 10 to 35% of your total energy intake. Now remember, that's sort of in combination with fat, and carbohydrates.

Most American adults, though, consume around 15%, which is towards the bottom of that recommended daily intake. And the recommended daily allowance is closer to around 0.36 grams per pound of body weight. And so that's about one-third of your body weight is what the RDA is. And so if you weigh 150 pounds, they're going to recommend you consume about 50 grams of protein daily.

Now, that's extremely low. That's like getting around 12 or so grams of protein on a daily basis, or I'm sorry, 12 grams of protein per meal. That's very low. So for instance, if somebody weighs 150 pounds, again, they're only getting 50 grams of protein a day. And I want to come out and say this, uh, the FDA and their recommended daily allowances are, are Vastly off.

I mean, when you look at the RDA of certain vitamins and minerals as well, they're just— they're not on. Or let me say this, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're, they're bottom threshold. You shouldn't think of that as optimal. You should think of that as the bottom of the barrel.

You want to at least get 50 grams of protein a day if you weigh 150 pounds in order not to get sick or ill of many conditions. But that's not the optimal level. We see the same thing with vitamin D levels. They say, well, you should have at least 30 or 20. Well, Really optimal is around closer to 50 to 80.

And so it's important to understand when you look at recommended daily allowances, that is sort of the bottom threshold for most people. Now, another important thing to consider is how much protein to eat at each meal. Listen to this. Typically, people eat 3 times the amount of protein at dinner than they do at breakfast. But remember, your body can only absorb so much protein at one time.

And so ideally, you want to shift protein and, and consume it in equal amounts at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And I also want to say this now, other macronutrients like carbs and fat, I actually think you're better off starting with higher carbs in the morning and decreasing throughout the day, and doing lower fat in the morning and increasing your fat to doing more in the evening, based on Chinese medicine, on what organs tend to be most, uh, active at certain times of the day.

But again, most people aren't doing this. We're eating almost— we're eating mostly carbs for breakfast, almost no protein, and that's an issue. And so most people want to be consuming at least half of their body weight in protein a day to closer to 1 gram per gram of body weight. So where the RDA is, if you weigh 150 pounds, they're recommending about 50 grams of protein.

What I'm recommending is closer to 100 to probably 120 grams of protein. Of protein as more of the ideal there. And so I would say if you're eating 3 meals a day, consuming 30 to 40 grams of protein per meal, if you weigh 150 pounds, is closer to the ideal. And if you weight train a lot and do a lot of heavy exercise, you might even want to do a little bit more than that if you're an athlete.

Now, I want to talk about special groups when we're talking about protein consumption and groups that want to make sure they're getting even more protein. And that is if you— once you reach the age of 50, you want to increase your protein to maintain muscle mass.

Now, I actually think this is true for everybody, but some studies have shown, generally speaking, that when you reach 50 and older, that's when your muscle mass starts declining even more readily. And so you do want to make sure you're getting more protein during those— when you reach— when you fall into that demographic.

Now, in one study of people that were overweight, increasing protein intake to 30% of calories caused a massive drop in calorie intake. And this study participants lost an average of 11 pounds over 12 weeks. And that's another thing to consider.

If at breakfast, if you're eating a lot of carbs, if you would replace some of that with protein, on average in this study, people lost 11 pounds over 12 weeks. That's a, that's a great amount of weight loss, about 3 to 4 pounds, about closer to 4 pounds a month if you just swap out eating more protein instead of carbohydrates.

So that's definitely something to consider that most people need to do. Now, I also want to talk about some other special groups, people that exercise more regularly also need more protein intake.

So again, if you, if you've just done leg day or you've done something where your butt, your legs, your back, a big muscle group, and lifted heavy and hard, worked out hard, you want to get more protein in that day. And maybe rather than doing your 3 meals, you also consume more protein around the time you're exercising.

What I personally do is I weigh around 170-some pounds and I probably try and get Closer to 150 grams of protein a day personally. And so what I will do is I will get around that 35 to 40 grams of protein 4 times a day is the way that I eat. And so I might wake up, I might eat breakfast around, I don't know, 7 or 8 AM, and then I'll work out.

And then about, so about 2 and a half hours later or so. So let's say I eat at 7, I'll eat again around 10:30. Uh, I'm sorry, I eat again around 9:30 AM. I'll eat then again around noon or 12:30 and again around 5 o'clock. Okay. So So that's typically what my eating window might look like.

And so I typically eat, eat between, I would say, you know, it's, it's around between like, you know, 8 and 5 or 8 and 6 PM. And so that's typically my eating window is around that 4 plus 6, around, I, I have about a 10-hour eating window. And so I still actually fast a good amount of time, but I sort of eat, um, those 3 to 4 times a day and typically get about that 35 to 40 grams of protein.

Per meal in order to optimize muscle growth and longevity. I now want to dive into some important studies that show that low protein intake is very bad for your health. Okay. There was a study done with 1,000 people that found a direct link between low protein intake and muscle loss and even sarcopenia. It's the last thing you want for longevity.

Remember that if you want to live a long time, you need to be able to squat down. You need to be able to lift heavy things. You need to be able to move. You can't do that without muscle. A lot of people age more readily when they don't have muscle. Muscle, according to Gabrielle Lyon, she's a physician who says this regularly, muscle is the, is the organ of longevity.

The second thing, there's a great study done on immune system weakness, and they found that protein is crucial for a strong immune system. A study with 200 participants showed that those with low protein intake had a higher incidence of infection. Wow. Infections. So that could be everything from Lyme disease to viruses to bacterial infections. But low protein equals weak immunity.

High protein equals stronger immunity. Another one is edema, fluid retention. This happens if you are not getting enough protein intake. Another study found that protein intake also increases muscle building and muscle repair. Of course, this is something we all know. This is why bodybuilders and athletes and people that are really fit and healthy consume a lot of protein.

They know that consuming more protein equals more lean, fit, and healthy muscles and larger muscles, which are going to help maintain you over time and better muscle repair. I want to mention this too. I want to dive into some of the misconceptions here around protein intake, okay? Because I hear this stuff constantly and it drives me crazy.

In the past few years, one of the most common protein-related misconceptions is that it is impossible to absorb more than 20 to 25 grams of protein at once due to what's called oversaturation of our receptors. This leads people to believe that for optimal muscle growth, they must dose protein continuously throughout the day.

And originally, this information came from a 2013 study where participants experienced greater muscle growth when they were fed 20 grams of protein 4 times a day. However, in this study, they were consuming a very fast-absorbing protein like whey protein, which isn't the ideal protein that most people should be consuming throughout the day.

What they found in a newer study is, is that when you're eating more slowly absorbed protein sources, such as those that come from red meat, chicken, eggs, beans, dairy, even plant-based protein, that 25-gram limit does not seem to apply. This misconception can lead people to underconsume protein at meals in favor of eating small amounts every 2 to 3 hours.

And what they're finding is, no, you can probably consume closer to 35 to 40 grams of protein per meal. So you can go higher in protein. Here are a few more misconceptions about protein. And one I hear is constantly this, is people say, well, isn't eating a lot of protein bad for the kidneys? Number one, the answer is no. And I'll prove this here in a minute.

But the other thing is, it's kind of funny to me that everybody's, you know, concerned about eating too much protein, but not concerned about eating too much fat or especially carbohydrates. I mean, somebody can go and eat 1,000 grams of carbohydrates daily versus if you consume 100 grams of protein, that could be dangerous. It just— it doesn't make sense.

People are consuming— I mean, the same person that's asking the question about, oh, can I consume my body weight in protein? That seems high. They're eating 5 times the amount of carbohydrates, which is burdening their, their pancreas. So, so, so one, no. I mean, that's, that's not the reality. But here's the— here's the thing.

Despite theories that high protein intake may stress the kidneys, studies show no significant difference in kidney function between bodybuilders with high protein intake. And I'm talking about really high protein intake and athletes with moderate intake.

A review concluded that restricting protein intake isn't necessary for healthy individuals and that low protein diets may actually contribute to declining kidney function as you age. So it's in fact the exact opposite according to the studies. We see a very similar thing with liver health.

High protein diets are beneficial for liver health, aiding in tissue repair and conversion of fats to lipoproteins for removal. In cases of liver disease, including alcoholic liver disease, high protein intake improves liver function and actually reduces mortality. So for liver disease, high protein actually increases your lifespan and longevity. Another one here is for bones.

Contrary to the belief that high protein diets cause osteoporosis through increased calcium excretion, recent evidence suggests that may actually improve bone mass in the elderly. Low protein intake can reduce calcium absorption, negatively affecting bone health. And by the way, the most important type of proteins to get For bone health are collagen proteins.

And so taking a collagen or a bone broth-based protein supplement that has glycine, hydroxyproline, and proline— these amino acids in collagen make up a, a, a, a very, uh, significant amount of actually your bones. Did you know that collagen, a form of protein, uh, there's more collagen in your bones than calcium and all other minerals combined?

So protein makes up more of your bones than minerals. Another one here is heart disease. High protein diets can prevent heart disease by improving blood lipid profiles, decreasing triglycerides and increasing HDL cholesterol, known by some as good cholesterol. They also reduce free radical production, which helps fight arterial sclerosis. Diabetes and weight loss. Here, this is huge.

This is huge for longevity. A diet with 30% protein, 40% carbs, and 30% fats improves glucose control, insulin sensitivity, helps reverse diabetes, and promotes weight loss better than high-carb diets. It also helps maintain lean muscle tissue and enhances feeling full so you don't have those food cravings. And so we know that, again, it's great for diabetes and weight loss.

And here's the summary. High protein diets are not only safe but may offer significant health benefits for improving kidney and liver function, enhance bone density, reducing heart disease risk, maintaining ideal body weight, preventing diabetes, and improving longevity. We need protein to be healthy. Now, there's another study I want to mention here on protein consumption for losing body fat.

There is a 6-month study done on a group of older men, 65 and above, and there's 2 groups, one that consumed 0.36 grams of protein per body weight, another one 0.6 grams of protein per body weight. And the group of men that did the 0.6 grams had a 15.6% greater reduction in visceral body fat than the lower protein group.

Now, visceral body fat is the body fat that surrounds your organs that creates— or that creates disease. In fact, it's the type of body fat that's most connected to, uh, mortality, taking years off your life and causing chronic disease. This actually fights and reverses that when you do a higher protein diet.

Another study found that high protein helps you feel full, which helps you lose both body fat and overall weight compared to regular diets. There's another study that found that protein has greater benefits for your metabolism than other foods, specifically carbohydrates. Research shows that protein has a much greater thermogenic effect, 20 to 30%, compared to carbs at 5 to 10% or fat at 0 to 3%.

So overall, if you want to support your metabolism in burning fat, losing weight, and being healthy, you want more protein. Now, the other thing to know is when you're consuming foods rich in protein like meat and beans and eggs, You're also getting a high dose of, of a lot of nutrients. Typically red meat, for instance, is very high in B vitamins such as B12, B6, niacin, and riboflavin.

It's high in iron, high in zinc, high in magnesium. Fatty fish, it's high in vitamin D. And so you want to make sure when you are getting protein, it's from organic wild sources. So that's the big thing.

When we look at any studies saying, oh, this protein consumption may increase disease, The reason likely is, is that those people in the studies are consuming the meat of animals that is not organic and it's non-grass-fed. And the fats in those animals in particular are what creating the disease, not the proteins themselves.

The animal sources of protein you want to consume are things like grass-fed organic beef, also bison, lamb, and goat, wild game like venison, elk, and pheasant, organic chicken. Turkey and duck, wild-caught fish like salmon, organic dairy— could be raw, and I, when I say not just organic dairy, I recommend raw and organic ideally— milk, cheese, and yogurt, and then eggs.

These are great sources of animal-based protein. And for plant protein, beans, lentils, chickpeas, nuts, and seeds are the best. You want to be getting protein from many of these sources if you can. And here I want to go through some Practical protein equivalents from common food sources. 1 Cup of milk has about 8 grams of protein. 1 Egg has about 6 grams of protein.

A 3-ounce piece of meat has about 20 to 21 grams of protein. 1 Cup of dry beans has about 16 grams of protein, and an 8-ounce container of yogurt has around 11 grams of protein. And so a serving size, if we're talking about 25 grams of protein. Certain types of cottage cheese can have about 25 grams of protein.

1 Scoop of protein powder, uh, 4 large eggs, a 3-ounce cooked chicken breast, uh, 3.5 ounces of deli turkey, uh, 4 ounces of grilled salmon, 3 ounces of ground beef, a 4-ounce can of like wild-caught salmon or fish. So again, around that 3 3 to 4 ounces has about 25 grams of protein.

Most of us can be doing about double of that during our meals, though, or at least 6 ounces is probably more ideal for most of us if you want to maintain muscle mass and promote longevity. Remember this as well. Lower quality protein sources such as soy and wheat protein, you know, they lack the essential amino acids you really need in one in that food.

Okay, so some people today, especially vegans, they're trying to get amino acids versus a lot of these plant-based sources, and many of those sources are not quality. Meat is going to be the highest source, followed by eggs, and dairy are going to be up there as well. And plant-based sources can be fantastic, especially doing a plant protein.

Ideally, I want to say though, some people get digestive disturbances from some plant proteins. Make sure it's from a brand that also maybe has enzymes and probiotics or sprouted, or that's just easier to digest, is better to do as well. Remember this: protein is vital to our diets. In Latin, it means primary.

It's probably the primary type of food you should focus on getting, or the primary macronutrient via your food intake. Most of us need to be getting more. Remember, take your body weight, cut it in half, consume at least that amount in, out in, in grams of protein a day. Typically, I would say closer to 2/3 to 3/4 a day is closer to ideal for you.

And for some, if you're an athlete, maybe even 1 gram per ounce of— per gram of body weight is more ideal there as well. I hope you've enjoyed this episode on protein intake. I busted a lot of misconceptions and went through exactly how much protein you want to be taking on a regular basis. Thanks so much for listening to the show.

By the way, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, like, and share. I can't wait to see you on the next episode.