Ritchie
Member
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2015
- Messages
- 490
To put it in context, I was replying to Haidut, who posted this thread with an article and study suggesting eating meat extends human life expectancy. Now, recently Peat has been speaking about lowering methionine, and protein in general, because of the theory that doing so extends life, amongst other health benefits. Clearly the title of this thread, and Peat's current position are at odds with each other. We're on the Ray Peat forum so we're kinda here to discuss/debate/explore his ideas, at least in part... So I asked haidut how he thinks it all squares.. In the context of this forum, the way Peat sees it is very relevant to the conversation..1) I dont base my statements off of how "Dr. Peat see's it", so a response of "Peat see's it X way" is largely irrelevant to this conversation. This is especially the case considering Dr. Peat has multiple quotes from many different periods of time that are seemingly contradictory with eachother.
Just to be clear, i'm not saying Peat is necessarily correct here.. but obviously wanting to explore his ideas, which is even more interesting in the face of contrasting research.
Point is he has obviously been convinced enough to take this route and adhere to that position... At least for now. He's certainly not trying to cause himself health detriment so what other motivations do you think he has when he knows full well about glycine and animal studies?2) Also, Peat lowering his protein intake to 60g/ day to keep methionine lower, doesn't mean that "He doesn't see" that the methionine restriction studies have mostly been done in lower animals, have resulted in certain physical tradeoffs, and that glycine has been shown to be somewhat of an antidote to methione.
Also, I'd be interested if you could link a study you've seen showing glycine to be an antidote to methionine excess...?
I'm not that well across it but I think there's research showing caloric restriction in general resulted in significant health outcomes, possibly through fasting or intermittent fasting. The methionine research stands on the shoulders of that, and the theory is that low methionine consumption is the reason that caloric restriction in general is so beneficial... Probably tryptophan and cysteine plays into that as well.3) If I'm not mistaken many of the methionine restriction studies in these lower animals were started when the animals where young. In quite a few other longevity models starting an intervention at a later age resulted in significantly less benefit than when started at a young age. This implies that methionine restriction when applied to full grown adult humans may not play out in the same manner that methionine restriction does in young lower animals.
Yes I know but Peat seems to have decided that this theory doesn't quite cut it. Otherwise he wouldn't be talking about striving to achieve low methionine via low protein consumption and dropping down to a 50gram a day protein diet.... If anyone is aware of glycine/collegen/gelatin and it's relationship to general protein intake it's Peat.4) Incorporating a larger amount of collagen/ gelatin in the diet may allow for sufficient protein intake, as well as a larger glycine intake, while effectively limiting methionine. This is something that Dr. Peat himself has discussed and may effectively diminish the need for a low protein diet.
Again - i'm interested in discussing his position and the rationale rather than using him as a flag for what is right or wrong.
I agree that only getting most of your protein from gelatin would lower methionine consumption, and tryptophan at that, but I think it's unclear that this would somehow be an antidote or balance if you are in methionine excess due to large consumption of other high methionine foods like muscle meats and so forth.
Do you think Peat is aware of what you are saying here?5) Studies in older adults show decreased mortality with higher intakes of protein. This has been discussed as being related to frailty, sarcopenia, and increased catabolism. So even if restricting methionine intake increased lifespan in humans (who most likely had to start restricting when they were young), the increased frailty, and decreased body size, particularly when older may predispose towards other issues that can possibly increase risk of mortality and cancel out the ability to realize the increase in total lifespan. This is not to mention possible alterations in quality of life due to the possible tradeoffs.
Some initial thoughts : there could be whole host of confounding variables in that research, for example were the people that were eating lower protein, eating high energy carbohydrate dense foods for what they weren't eating in protein dense foods? Along with other nutrition? Obviously if they weren't eating as much overall, thus lowering protein along with everything else, that would lead to frailty etc. Often when protein is lowered, it means people are eating less overall. Especially in the elderly.
It's possible that we as humans don't actually need as much protein intake as we have been lead to believe. It's easy to understand the industry motivations for convincing the public that higher and possibly excessive protein levels are necessary. What our body doesn't use in protein intake gets converted to glycogen through glyconeogenesis, which causes stress on the system and chronically leads to a whole host of issues, and then either gets stored as fat or used as energy, while the surplus of excess amino acids are expelled and the kidneys have to deal with the nitric oxide caused by this, again not ideal. You'd rather get all your glycogen needs through sugar and carbs than have to convert it from high amounts of excess protein. Peat has discussed this alot, and it's partly why keto diets cause so many issues. More so, if you are already eating a high carbohydrate diet along with high protein you won't be using the excess protein for energy, so it will be more likely stored as fat after glyconeogenesis. So the combo of excess protein and high sugar/carbohydrate could be a recipe for getting fat and stressed, even though the sugar would mitigate some of that stress... All this considered, it would be extremely beneficial to understand what the ideal amount of protein consumption should be, ie what can our bodies actually use and make do with.. and what is in excess.. This seems to be the route Peat is exploring...
Last edited: