You remember the story of Goldilocks and three bears? 

The porridge is too hot, then too cold, & she needed it just right. 

Same with protein, which gives us the amino acids that we need to build: 

  • Immuno-globulins (IgA, IgG etc)
  • Collagen: Ligaments, tendons, skin, bone, cartilage and more
  • Neurotransmitters

Also used in the energy cycle, green boxes circled in red are amino acids.

I could go on, but you get the idea, this is critical, hence some aminos are considered “essential”, meaning you have to eat them. 

While others can be made from those essential aminos. 

You can see that in action here on the dopamine pathway. 

Phenylalanine is the “parent” which is convert down the line into tyrosine, hence phenylalanine is essential and tyrosine is considered “condititionally” non-essential ie you may need to eat it, or you may not depending on demands and genetics. 

I personally take 1000 mg tyrosine in the morning to push up my dopamine as I have issues with the conversion and the receptor for dopamine. Hence my family history of alcohol issues, mental health and my tendency to poor attention/focus initially and then an unshakable focus, dare I say an obsessive tendency. 

Too little protein = too little amino acids and your health is going to suffer. 

And it can be vague, a tendency to infections, a lack of resilience to stress, less energy, poor healing. 

This is the majority of people. 

It is also possible to eat too much protein, but this is very rare. 

Too much protein and people tend to feel overly full, heavy and a tad bloated/heavy. 

At a bare minimum, we want 1 g of protein per kg of body weight or 6.5g per stone. 

But we see the best outcomes at 2 g per kg of body weight or 13 g per stone. 

I weigh around 75kg or 11st 8 lb, so I aim for 150g of protein daily. 

If you want an easy way to tell patients, tell them 1-2 palms ish of protein per meal, depending on their weight. 

One palm is between 20-30 g, so if I say each palm is 25g, then I would need over the day 6 palms of protein to hit my goals. 

Chicken thigh as an example:

When you start adding it up, it is easy to miss that target. 

One easy way to add to that is, of course, our Evolved collagen product. 

2 dessert spoons daily is 14 grams of all the aminos you need to make new fresh collagen which includes, of course, GLYCINE, which is awesome in so many ways. 

If you have forgotten, re-remember. 

Those two article are full of gold nuggets !!

Next time we will talk about why not enough protein might make you over-eat.