Dr. Luc (Luke) van Loon

So maintenance of your normal protein intake is an essential thing.

So exercise increases muscle protein synthesis, also increases muscle protein breakdown, but it increases muscle synthesis to a greater extent than it increases muscle breakdown.

So net balance becomes better.

That's without food intake.

If you throw protein on top of that, then breakdown is inhibited to some extent and protein synthesis is further increased, allowing you to adapt and to recondition the muscle to what you're aiming for.

And that could be like more mitochondrial proteins when you're an endurance athlete or myofibular proteins when you're becoming a more resistance type athlete.

amount then if you take that away and you're still doing the training then does it adapt quickly as well or will you start to lose muscle mass we don't know but i would predict and let's let's do the extreme uh there's anecdotal uh reports of people that have a very high protein intake diet and then you tell them that they don't need that amount of protein

And then they do an experiment, and they basically say, okay, you know what?

I'm going back to 1.5.

And I used to be eating so much supplements.

I was sitting at almost 3 grams per kilogram body mass, and I'm bringing it back down to 1.5.

I'm losing muscle, so I'm not doing it anymore.

I'm not sure what would happen if they actually kept it there for a while because it's homeostasis.

Your body adapts.

So probably if you're consuming more than three grams of protein per kilogram body mass per day, the turnover of other tissue and or the oxidation of the protein will probably be at a higher level.

So you can't basically get a new homeostasis within like two or three days.

That requires studies that look at changes over time.

I mean, like I said, I mean, we now tell everybody that 0.66 or 0.8 is the minimal requirement.

I assume that there's people that eat much less protein, but they still stay in balance.

If you go to a third world country of people that are not consuming enough food, they adapt.