Dr. Luc (Luke) van Loon

And that's why we need protein.

Now, if you refresh with less proteins, probably, as you suggest, turnover rates of some of the other organs might go down.

Which ones?

We don't know.

We know a lot about muscle.

We hardly know anything about how the other organs respond to protein intake.

So there's a lot to learn.

A lot of questions there.

So the first thing is protein synthesis is not the same as muscle protein accretion.

So the building of muscle is not the same as reconditioning.

When people like Stu Phillips, myself, we measure muscle protein synthesis.

Now, the muscle protein synthesis goes up after exercise when you do endurance type exercise, but also when you do resistance type exercise.

The long-term adaptation, of course, is completely different.

Look at the physique of a marathon runner and a bodybuilder.

That's hugely different.

But they both have very high muscle protein synthesis after a training session.

So the protein synthesis is a measure of to what extent does the muscle recondition to become more adapted to the type of exercise that you perform.

Now, we do see that if you ingest more proteins above 0.8 and towards, say, 1.6, 1.8, even some people suggest 1.8, that you get a more efficient reconditioning.

Now, does the muscle need all that protein?

No, because, for example, in the endurance athlete, the endurance athlete is not gaining weight.