Quote:
Originally Posted by Zei
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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Wow, ya, lots of stuff in there. I'm not familiar with mTOR, I just did a quick search to get an idea.
OK, so first, longevity. We got Cynthia Kenyon who worked with worms and showed that insulin was the driving agent. Less insulin, longer life. Don't know if it applies to humans, but there's a very high likelihood that it does.
So now, overall health. We got a bunch of stuff showing insulin is the primary agent here. More insulin, worse health. Basically, whatever makes us fat, also makes us sick. Not necessarily through the same mechanisms, but the association is too strong to ignore.
So now for protein. It stimulates insulin, so we're dealing with both longevity and health. But there's a trick - fat. Eat more fat, mitigates insulin. It's as simple as that.
On Wiki, there's mention of oxidative damage. In my opinion, the entire idea of oxydative damage (and that anti-oxydants are beneficial) is absolute BS. We have lungs. Our cells have tons of mitochondria for aerobic respiration. Everything our cells do requires oxygen. Oxydation is the de facto life-giving mechanism for us. How could it somehow flip 180 and begin to kill us as we grow older? Well, mTOR is blamed for oxydative damage, so it's about as much BS there too, in my opinion.
On the other hand, mTOR gets me thinking about a genetic kill-switch (like in the Blade Runner movie for the replicants) but that's way outside the scope of this forum and discussion.