Recommended daily protein intake too low for the elderly
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas...70523095019.htm
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http://journal.frontiersin.org/arti...2017.00013/full |
I see the "dark arts" of the vegan lobby, which demonizes protein. They are constantly claiming the body needs less than whatever the standard is, and they constantly clamor to lower those.
For me, I do better with more protein, from meat or fish. My vegetarian attempts, even with eggs and cheese, was a disaster. My experience with elderly cats is that they need more nutrition, protein, and fat. Their digestive system is not as efficient as it used to be, and supplementation makes a huge difference to their quality of life. Are people so different? I don't think so. |
Given all the advice lately to limit protein I tried, briefly, to follow Rosedale's advise but found it impossible. I could not limit my protein to the degree he recommends while keeping my carbs adequately low at the level where I seem to do best but still get sufficient micronutrients. It just didn't work for me. I would also have had to force feed myself more fat and my diet was already about 70%-75% fat and I have no interest in bullet proof coffee. I like mine black.
And also there was the problem of evidence. Do we really know that a mostly plant based limited protein diet confers benefits or is this just the latest enthusiasm? I'm going with the latter. I decided to simply eat the way that seems to work for me and which I constantly return to, my apparent "sweet spot". According to Cron-O-Meter over the last 7 days I have averaged 83.5 gms of protein without a whole lot of daily variation. That's where I have decided to stay. I guess I fall into that "elderly" category at 68. Could it really be that I'm doing the right things for myself? Jean |
I seem to do fine, even on a ketogenic diet, at the RDA. I reserve the right to not be typical. Or to increase protein if I stop seeming to do fine.
I might be okay with the RDA for protein if they'd call it the recommenday daily minimum instead, he's right that "allowance" makes it sound like a number you shouldn't go over, when it's intended to be a number you should meet or exceed. |
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From what I understand all RDA's are considered the minimum necessary to prevent deficiency rather than what is optimal and, of course, there is that pesky problem of context. The necessary intake of any nutrient while eating the SAD may not be the same as the necessary intake while eating ketogenic. I tend to use them, logging my foods on Cron-O-Meter, just because they are the best we have but know that they are not some absolute etched in stone (and of course even stone erodes). |
I do fine on the RDA as long as I get all of it from animal protein. When I was a vegetarian, my nails & hair were constantly splitting, I lost lean body mass and was exhausted all the time. That and increased allergies, asthma symptoms, etc. turned me into a born-again near-carnivore.
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Requirements are highly individual and sort of subjective. If I ate 40 grams of protein a day for some period of time--eventually, I'd probably be in protein balance, likely after losing some amount of lean mass. Take 50 people just like me at that point, do a nitrogen balance study--you might find our protein requirement to be 40 grams a day. Another group of teaser clones eats 120 grams of protein a day for a similar period, and their protein requirement by nitrogen balance, after lean mass increases and plateaus, is 120 grams of protein a day. The whole exercise is a little meaningless, until you develop some sort of opinion about what level my lean mass should be at in the first place.
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Protein balance is one we discuss quite frequently. The quote from the Science Daily stating there's a need for larger, longer term clinical trials with older subjects on varied amounts of protein intake:
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Note that the "varied amounts" is my adjustment to the proposed trial having subjects consuming from a range of low to high protein amounts. Yes, this is required to be able to really understand the dynamics of protein consumption as we age, and the cynic in me wonders if/when this will ever happen. My cynical self also suspects that "dietary experts" are still trying to find that "one optimized amount of protein for all" myth that likely doesn't exist other than very general guidelines tempered with caveats for many other variables in addition to age. This ultimately gets too hard to do and results in ineffective guidelines for all. Yeah, I'm really cynical about our ability to achieve this goal in today's chaotic nutritional climate. :confused: I know from my own N=1 experiences, I can eat on the higher end of the Phinney/Volek recommendation for protein and do quite well. However, I also believe that negative impacts from too much protein (at least for me) could be mitigated by IF. My observations are that one of several reasons that periodic IF is healthy is due in large part to the absence of exogenous protein for periods of time. This enables the metabolism to clean out and re-balance. It may be in fact why I can eat more protein, very few carbs, and not have to resort to extensively increasing my fat consumption to achieve satiety when I'm not fasting. |
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Rob, I'm interested by this. So how much protein do you actually consume in terms of g/kg body weight? And how exactly do you do the IF? Is it daily by restricting eating to within a 6 to 8 hour window or do you fast for whole days at regular intervals? |
Euh, a simple logic. The Bellevue all-meat trial shows excess protein is impossible or with benign effects if at all, with some caveat specific to an all-meat diet (i.e. must eat enough fat, must be some fresh meat, etc). Conversely, kwashiorkor shows protein deficiency is possible and with severe and permanent effects. So, more protein is always better than less protein. And since RDA is a minimum to avoid deficiency but does not account for any unforseen situations that could require more protein, then more than RDA is always better than equal or less.
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Hi, I'm a newbie. Question What about kidney function as you age. Could too much protein cause problems?
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Gotta disagree here, anytime that a greater elevation of ketones is desirable. For my n=1, I get some benefits from restricting protein as well as from restricting carbohydrate. It's possible that being freed from binging, and reduced social anxiety/depression comes at a cost to lean mass or has some other cost to my well being, I don't know if this is true or not, I can't tell by performance or tape measure. But I don't know that we always have the option of optimizing for all things, either. Also the Bellevue trial was pretty small. A study like that is powered enough to show that an all-meat diet will not universally cause deficiencies in humans--but it's not strong enough to conclude that this diet will be sufficient to meet the needs of all humans. |
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Bintang - Here's how I approach g/kg or g/lb. of body weight using the Phinney/Volek recommended formula. I'm not precise and usually stay within a range of grams of protein based on my physical activity levels. I usually eat two meals per day with about a 5-6 hour eating window, some days I eat one meal with a 24 hour eating window. I also do a 3-4 day IF once a month on top of this. Here's the calculation method on which I base my protein intake in general terms (quoted from KetoDiet Buddy): Quote:
So for me, (and I'll do the example using pounds) I weigh 186lbs. Estimating about 23% fat, that gives me around 143lbs. of lean mass. I multiply by 0.8 as a moderately active individual = 114.4g of protein, which to determine the overall weight of protein (use beef at 7 grams of protein per ounce) is around 16 ounces of protein sources (meat/fish/eggs) per day at the highest end. This is spread among two meals for me during the day typically; however, I often eat one meal per day and and I'm lower than 16 ounces of protein (114.4 protein grams) in a single meal. I often am lower in total protein per day than 16 ounces depending on my work schedule and the opportunity to do exercise (workouts). If I'm not working out, I'll lower my protein quantity, but I'm not weighing food or being very conscious of precision here. This approach seems to work for me. So, my high end might occasionally touch a 16 ounces of eggs, meat or fish, my lower end might be 8-10 ounces or 56-70 protein grams, and my higher end is likely around 12-14 ounces. If I'm physically active, I'm going toward the higher end. Note: edited to include eggs as a typical regular protein source and to clarify my low and high level of protein consumption. |
mTOR. Higher protein intake upregulates our nutrient-sensing system mTOR, signalling there must be plenty of nutrients around so grow rapidly, reproduce and (as I understand it) sort of burn out quickly and drop dead? Not sure that's exactly the best way to describe it, but something like that. So then low protein downregulates mTOR. Hey, maybe there's a famine or something, thinks our body, so better hunker down and go into repair mode and preserve one's self to survive long-term in case things get better so we can then eat plenty and reproduce (and then drop dead?). So some low-protein advocates think we're better off not to be upregulating mTOR with lots of protein because not only we but things like cancer cells and stuff like to grow, so that we should keep it tamped down with low protein so we'll keep repairing ourselves, stay healthy and live a long time. Except then isn't there the potential problem of sarcopenia, muscle wasting, getting weaker and more frail as we age if we don't upregulate mTOR to do some muscle growth to prevent all that? On the one hand people like Dr. Rosedale and Dr. Gundry suggest fairly low protein targets to downregulate mTOR and stay healthy; on the other I heard a talk by another doctor say women of a certain age should be eating lots of protein several times each day to upregulate mTOR or the muscle wasting will occur. So kind of seem like opposites--do we want mTOR upregulated, downregulated or what as we age? Anyone who knows more about this have any thoughts? It seems to me like more than a trivial matter because who wants to be maybe really long-lived but weak and frail? There's got to be more to this.
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