The 40g Carb Limit Most People Should Follow - Dr. Gabrielly Lyon

Let's debunk low carbs. Low carb diets have been positioned as a silver bullet for everything from weight loss to metabolic syndrome. But carbs are not the enemy. Am I right? — You're right. Bad cooking is the enemy. Okay. Carbohydrates. How do we define carbohydrates? You've got your carbohydrates like pasta and rice and potato and things that are white. You have your anthocyinins like you're talking about vegetables and fruits. And then you've got your we covered rice and then you know like your processed highly palatable ultrarocessed foods. — Yeah. — Now the first question is I think that we all want to know is how do we design a nutrition plan and a diet for a healthy metabolism. We can agree upon that. — Yeah. Of course — we know that there's carbohydrates, fats and proteins and that carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient. Meaning your body can make all the carbohydrates it needs. So if we were to think about something on the high end, for every 100 gram of protein, your body will generate 60 grams of carbohydrates. It's probably on the high end, but it's somewhere along the lines of that. — Is that gluconneogenesis? Is that what you're describing? — That's exactly right. — Gluconioenesis. [clears throat] But dietary protein is an essential macronutrient and you need more of it as you age. essential fatty acids, they're only roughly maybe four grams. So, it's minimal. [snorts] Now, as American, do you know how many carbohydrates we eat on average? — Uh, I'm going to take a guess that it's in the hundreds. — Yes, it's in the 300s. — Damn. — The average American eats 300 grams of carbohydrates a day. The RDA, take it or leave it, is set at 130 gram. However, that is two standard deviations above what is felt to be necessary. What do I mean by that? 80 gram of glucose is what we need. And that is doesn't mean that we need to eat it. That's how much we need for body function. So there's the obligatory use, the brain, the red blood cells, the kidney, then there's the organ systems. Then there's muscle, which doesn't burn many carbohydrates at rest. burns primarily fatty acids. — So this is how and then obviously some gets stored as glycogen. — The 80 gram amount is something that we know is safe and again we can generate it all. Now the next question is if it is set at two standard deviations at 130 gram of carbohydrates, do we actually need that? Is that safe? Or do we need to earn our carbohydrates? And I would say that how we make carbohydrate decisions is twofold. How many carbohydrates can you eat in a 24-h hour period of time? So you just like we think about protein, right? So our protein decision is how much protein do you need in a 24-h hour period. And then depending on how high that is, you worry about distribution, the first meal, the last meal. But we don't talk about that for carbohydrates, do we? — Have [clears throat] you ever thought of the carbohydrate threshold? uh I've not and I think part of the reason has to do with the fact that carbohydrates are relatively easy to consume whereas protein is takes more work. It's more expensive. Protein tends to be more pricey — unless you come to your house and you have protein chips. — Fair. Yes. — Okay. — So the first meal if you think about carbohydrates now carbohydrates glucose is toxic to the body at high levels. So we need a certain amount to maintain blood sugar but anything above that is considered toxic and abnormal. In fact in a 2hour period we have a name for that if your glucose remains elevated and that is — type two diabetes. — Exactly. — We do not have a name for that for protein. This is with the understanding that elevated levels of blood glucose can be toxic to the body and you release insulin. You have a high carbohydrate load. You use insulin to move glucose out of the bloodstream into cells. This should not be used every day. This is not we do not want to depend on insulin to move glucose out of the bloodstream. We number one don't want to have too many carbohydrates at that one meal and number two we have to use our muscle to move glucose out of the bloodstream into muscle without the use of insulin. — Okay, so this is like very long-winded story. The other aspect of carbohydrates and we're going to come back to are carbohydrates bad? And I think that they're bad for some people. If 74% or so of Americans are either overweight or obese, I'm assuming they have some kind of if not over metabolic dysregulation. Right? So when we begin to think about

how we design a diet and everybody talks about carbohydrates is how many carbohydrates per day, but it really comes down to how many carbohydrates per meal and how do we dispose of those carbohydrates if we are sedentary. The answer to that is roughly I wouldn't have anyone go over 40 or so grams of carbohydrates at a meal. Beyond that, you begin to distort metabolism. And you know, the number could be 50. But with outside of exercise, then you're going to have challenges with over time distorting your metabolism. — It probably varies according to body size and more specifically muscle mass, right? like a small undermuscled lady might effectively dispose of uh a much lower dose bolus of glucose as compared to a 220 pound — I think that's a really great point — bodybuilding male yes and that skeletal muscle is your primary site for glucose disposal as we age and people become more inactive you have less muscle mass and you know there's muscle atrophy from disuse and denervation and um medications all kinds of reasons that we are up against chronic inflammation that we lose and sedentary behavior that we lose skeletal muscle. However, when it comes to carbohydrates, if we were to correct for carbohydrate intake, I think we can put the body in uh somewhat of a safety space where we can really begin to number one, stop chasing blood sugar regulation and number two, really begin to focus on and prioritize protein. So, that first meal of the day, again, carbohydrate consumption. Are carbohydrates bad? No. Do you have to earn your carbohydrates? Yes. Is a low carb diet helpful? Yes, especially if you have metabolic dysregulation. And how I would define that is metabolic syndrome. So percent body fat over 30, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, elevated insulin, elevated glucose. People will say that is a s that is a uh diagnosis of metabolic syndrome. And I would say and you would say that is a diagnosis of unhealthy skeletal muscle — because what we are seeing is the muscle's inability to be able to manage those metabolites. — Hey, if you like that video, you need to check out this one here and I'll see you there.