How to Maintain Your Skeletal Muscle Health
with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, Founder of The Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine
Skeletal muscle is the biggest organ in your body. It helps your body to move around, maintain its internal temperature, store nutrients, and stabilize joints. The importance of these muscles and how they help us lead healthy, capable lives is what Dr. Gabrielle Lyon has based her entire career upon, so much so that she created The Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine. In my conversation with Dr. Lyon on the Live Purely Podcast, she dove deep into the key components of muscle health and the top two ways to maintain your skeletal muscle health.
STRENGTH TRAINING
We’re in our weight lifting era and there’s no going back. Dr. Lyon shared on the podcast that strength training is key to building and maintaining skeletal muscle. Resistance strength training (think doing squats with a kettlebell or lifting weights) enhances our muscular health, which allows us to gain better overall health and become more capable at handling everyday challenges and tasks. If you’re just beginning your strength training journey, Dr. Lyon recommends incorporating it 3 times per week with 10 sets per muscle group.
“The goal that we are looking for is an adaptation, we are doing this repetition, this activity to gain better health, and to become better at and more capable at life.” - Dr. Gabrielle Lyon
DIETARY PROTEIN
If you’re going to build skeletal muscle, you need to incorporate protein into your diet, and chances are you’re not eating enough of it. In our conversation, Dr. Lyon recommends eating roughly 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight if you are a fairly active person. This is enough to maintain, but not build, your skeletal muscle. She also mentioned the most important meal of the day for your body to intake protein is breakfast because your body is depleted and primed for nutrients. For the average person, you should aim to include 20-50 grams of protein in this first meal. This curbs hunger and allows our body to generate our own glucose, which helps to build skeletal muscle.
If you’re curious to learn more from Dr. Lyon and keep up with The Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine, listen to the full episode below!
Listen to the full episode here to learn more:
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