Know Your Physio

Dr. Layne Norton, PhD: How to Judge Studies, Train Smarter, and Stick to It

• Dr Layne Norton, PhD • Episode 144

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I sat down with Dr. Layne Norton, PhD, one of the most respected names in evidence-based fitness and nutrition, to cut through the noise that dominates our feeds. If you’ve ever been confused by conflicting advice from influencers, or wondered how to separate hype from science, this conversation is for you.

Layne walks us through how to actually read research, spot red flags, and apply the right evidence to your own health and performance. We talk about adherence, why consistency beats hacks, how to think about n=1 experimentation, and why muscle is way more than just something that moves your body—it’s one of the most powerful protectors of long-term health.

If you want to stop guessing and start making decisions that are backed by data (and not just feelings), you’ll love this episode. Listen in, and you’ll walk away with a practical blueprint for training smarter, fueling better, and staying resilient—without falling for the myths.


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Topics Covered:

[00:06:25] The beauty of being wrong.

[00:09:26] Debunking fitness misinformation techniques.

[00:14:06] Randomized control trials explained.

[00:19:32] Dietary fiber and mortality risk.

[00:31:52] Managing stress effectively.

[00:36:11] Fiber intake recommendations.

[00:43:54] Personal preference in training.

[00:50:25] Consistency in training and lifestyle.

[00:56:06] Physical toughness VS mental resilience.

[01:00:21] Muscle mass and GLP-1s.

[01:03:20] Muscle's role in disease protection.

[01:07:50] Ice baths and recovery myths.

[01:12:09] Personal responsibility in health.

[01:17:59] Intuitive eating and weight loss.

[01:18:42] Intuitive eating and control.

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Layne Norton:
I was trying to tell my daughter this. My daughter's eight and she's having a hard time understanding why she should go to school. You know, I said, honey, the weird thing about life is when you look back on the things that are most fun to you, you will actually remember the things that at the time were the hardest. When I've won world championships or set world records or got my PhD, yes, I remember the adulation of doing the thing, but what I actually remember fondly is all the crap I had to trudge through leading up to those moments. That's what actually sticks out. If you don't allow yourself to go through those things, you'll never have those moments. Adherence has to be the foundation of anything. Making something a lifestyle. Consistency. Nothing works if you don't work. Nothing works if you're not consistent. You can take the best athletes in the world. They have two things in common. They are very genetically gifted. They work really freaking hard. You very rarely will find the best who didn't work really hard. And it's difficult to work really hard if you don't enjoy overall what you're doing. If you want to build mental resilience and mental toughness, start with physical toughness. The average caloric consumption in the United States is 3,500 calories a day. The average physical activity is less than 20 minutes. That is the big problem.

Andres Preschel: Before we jump in, quick shout out to today's sponsor, Timeline Nutrition. They've developed MitoPure gummies, the only clinically proven way to restore mitochondrial health and support healthy aging from the inside out. And my listeners get 20% off at timeline.com slash undress. That's timeline.com slash undress, A-N-D-R-E-S. Go try them, your cells will thank you. All right, we're live. Lane Norton, welcome to the show.

Layne Norton: Thanks for having me.

Andres Preschel: So, man, there's just so much ground I want to cover with you, man. And on behalf of my audience and everyone that tunes in, I want to thank you for being here. I know your time is super valuable and I want to make sure that everyone tuning in gets as much out of this conversation as absolutely possible. You know, let's distill some of the latest in evidence-based health, fitness, high performance with one of the best. So, Yeah, before we jump right into that stuff, I want to ask you, man, if we can start with why, you know, why do you do what you do?

Layne Norton: Oh, man. I guess, I think I read somewhere that we, a lot of us end up trying to become the person we needed to help us when we were kids, you know. And I guess when I got into bodybuilding when I was like 18 years old, I mean, I just had so many questions and so much stuff was so confusing. You know, this magazine say train this way, this magazine say train this way, this bodybuilder say train this way, eat this way, eat this way. And all of them were in great shape. So it was difficult to disentangle like, okay, when people say, well, different things work for different people. Is that really true? Are we really like that physiologically different from person to person? Or there's some common threads here that, you know, maybe I'm not equipped to pick up. And, um, that was kind of why I got into, um, you know, academia, uh, switched my major to biochemistry during my first year of college. then was three years in, didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. This is circa 2003, my junior year of college, and at that time, if you wanted to make money in the fitness industry, which I wanted, that's what I wanted to do, was be in the fitness industry, and I loved bodybuilding, it was kind of like your options were start a supplement company, start a gym, work as a personal trainer, or go try to be Mr. Olympia. I mean, that wasn't the only options, but that's kind of what, I had – and none of those really appealed to me. So quite honestly, part of going to graduate school was one, I just didn't feel like I knew that much and here I am in a year supposed to be a professional. And two, I wanted to lay the real world a few years and figured if I had a master's or PhD, I wouldn't be in the unemployment line. So hopefully I can figure something out. And, uh, I just kind of got lucky in some ways. Um, you know, I'd started posting on the bodybuilding.com message boards in 2001, right. When I did my first show and shortly thereafter, I started writing for bodybuilding.com. So I was already doing content before content was a thing.

Andres Preschel: Yeah.

Layne Norton: And just continued writing, um, started a video series of bodybuilding.com like back in 2007 that became very popular. And this is all before, you know, I guess I would consider, you know, made it or whatever. And I think a lot of the discussions on the message boards, the debates I would have with people, it actually in a way made me a better scientist because I had to, I couldn't just say, well, this, I had to back it up or I wanted to back it up. And so many of the things I thought were true when I'd go and look into the research, I'm like, oh man, this actually isn't what I thought it was. And so I think just being curious and that drive to, to get things right, um, kind of drove me. And then when I got to a position where I felt like I, I knew a good bit and even, even then, like every few years something will come up and I'll be like, Oh crap. Well, Oh, I was wrong about that. Um, it's usually not things that I feel really strongly about. Usually it's things that I haven't looked into that much and I just kind of have a, a preexisting belief. But yeah, like every few years something comes around I go. Oh man, okay. Well gonna have to dig deeper into that and For me, that's fun. I like that stuff. I like Actually, one of the things I think is the coolest is when I think a certain way and then I see a bunch of evidence and I go, well, I got to change the way I think on this. I think that's cool. A lot of people don't like that. What's in a blue moon? Yeah, I mean, I like to, I'm not going to lie, I like to be right. I mean, I'll do cartwheels in my living room when I'm right, but, you know, I care more about getting the right answer than I do being right. And, you know, I always tell people, But my PhD experience with Dr. Lehman was so great because he made it cool to be wrong. He's okay with being wrong. We're okay with being wrong. I was wrong a lot. And I think the cool part of that is if you are already doing everything right, if you're right about everything, that actually kind of sucks because you're capped out. You're already doing everything you can possibly do. And you can improve. So I actually, I think being wrong when you find out you're wrong, it's kind of a beautiful thing, you know, so that those have kind of been the drivers for me. And now, you know, in my forties feeling like I'm more established, I have a good audience. Um, I have, you know, I think a lot of credibility in the space. Uh, I'm really working on, you know, trying to help as many people as I can to get good information out there and to act as a bridge between hardcore science. Your average Joe and application, because I think that there's not a lot of people that can create that trinity.

Andres Preschel: And, you know, I think a lot of the criticism for people that are in academia like yourself or that have their PhDs and even their masters, I mean, there seems to be a lot of debate about how relevant the literature they learn in school is today. So what I want to ask you is, I mean, obviously your thoughts around that topic, but also, you know, how do you stay on top of the best and the latest as it's spewing out of these, you know, research settings?

Layne Norton: Uh, you know, it's actually great. So I will say one thing, social media is great in terms of like, now that I'm known as a person who debunks or who does content on this, I just get it sent to me when new studies come out and there's big and there's stories on it or whatever. I just get it sent to me. Um, and so that helps. I also do like journal sweeps. Like I have, you know, keyword searches in PubMed that will, you know, pop stuff up to me every week when, when new journals are published. Um, so that's kind of how I keep on top of that stuff. And then just seeing what other experts are saying in the space, uh, trying to stay on top of that. Um, and seeing what people who I consider charlatans are saying in the space too. I mean, that's kind of like knowing what's going on that's in vogue. You know what I mean?

Andres Preschel: For sure. My goal in life is to get so big online that you start reacting to my videos, proving me wrong. That's how I know I made it.

Layne Norton: That's funny. I, uh, well, you know, if I'm reacting to your videos, you're probably doing something wrong is usually what I say. But, um, you know, I, I've, I've had, um, I've had people who I, who I like who have messaged me and basically been like, um, Uh, or I had one colleague of mine who is a personal friend and she messaged me and was like, okay, I said this thing on a podcast. I overgeneralized, please don't put me on what the fitness. And I'm like, okay, no problem. You know? Um, yeah, it was, uh, that, that I did say like years ago when I started the debunking, I'm like, I want. scam artists to live in fear of winding up on what the fitness.

Andres Preschel: I think, I think many do. Um, and, and just, uh, from, I mean, this is one of the nerdiest questions I'm going to ask you on this podcast today, but, uh, on behalf of myself and a lot of the nerds that tune in, you know, do you, can you recall off the top of your head, the, the different criteria that you have set up on your Google, on your, uh, PubMed, um, alert profile? so that you know, you know that what's the criteria for the studies that are that are that are relevant to you that are triggering these alerts?

Layne Norton: Yeah, I mean, really, I have in a lot of the subjects that I'm interested in, you know, so stuff to do with protein synthesis, protein metabolism, hypertrophy, resistance training in hypertrophy.

Andres Preschel: I mean, specifically to qualify those studies, right? Not just the topics, but to qualify the studies. I see.

Layne Norton: Well, I talk about all kinds of different studies because I think it's important to talk about all different kinds of studies, and I think this is one area where people really do not understand how difficult it is to conduct exercise and nutrition studies. And this is why you have people going, well, I was only in 16 people, or it was only for four weeks. or they didn't control these things. And I'm like, okay, so I actually have in my, I have a guide ebook called How to Read Research for our rep subscribers, which is my research review. And we have a Venn diagram on there that's three circles, and they only overlap in one spot. And the circles are control, level of control, number of subjects, and duration of study. So if you want high subject number, long duration, it is going to be very, very free living. It is not gonna be very well controlled. If you want high subject number, high control, it's gonna be very short in duration, probably days. If you want high control, high subject, or if you want high control, long duration, it's gonna be in very few subjects. And if you want all of those things together, it's gonna be in animals. So, the reality is, you know, I'll pull up a study that's like, for example, say a metabolic ward study. Like, I just looked at one of these the other day. I think it was like 12 people, it was a crossover design, so each person was their own control, and it was like, I think a total of 60 hours, right? for each treatment. But during that time, these people are getting directly measured their energy expenditure, their movement. They got accelerometers on all their joints. They're tracking everything they eat, their They're doing urine collection, stool collection for nitrogen balance. There's so many things going on in such a high level of control that you really can't do it for very long because metabolic wards are kind of food jail. And so how many people are going to sign up to be in jail essentially for more than a few days if they're not getting paid? And people will say, well, it was so short in duration. Oh, yeah, yeah. But look how great the control was. And then you'll have, you know, studies that are like big cohorts, right, where it's, you know, 100,000 people, they tracked them over 10 years, but there's no intervention. They're just looking at what they did and trying to correlate certain things. And I had this debate with somebody on the other day. They go, cohort studies in epidemiology can never establish causation. I said, well, then we can't make it. They said, you can't make any claims without a randomized control trial, which listen, I'm big on human randomized control trials. I said, okay, well, then we can't make any longevity claims then ever, because you can't do a randomized control trial on longevity. You can't. You can't control people for their entire lifetime. The best you can do is like Mendelian randomization. That's the best you can do. You can't control people.

Andres Preschel: Can you explain for the folks tuning in what that means?

Layne Norton: Sure. Great, great question. So first off, I got to explain why randomization is important. When we say randomized control trials, the randomization portion of that is very important because let's take, for example, if we're gonna do a study on hypertrophy, right? And resistance training. And there is a high volume group and a low volume group. And we just say, oh, you know what? You can self-select in whatever group you wanna go into. Guess what the people who train really hard are probably gonna self-select into? The high volume group. Now, we think volume matters, but now we don't know if it is confounded by the fact that, okay, they're doing more volume, but maybe these people just like to train harder. They enjoy training. Or maybe the people who are more genetically gifted at growing muscle tend to default into that group. We don't know because there's certain inherent characteristics that may cause people to self-select into different groups. So what we do instead is we take people and we randomize them. So we go, it's not flipping a coin, but essentially flipping a coin and going, you go here, you go here, which is also, by the way, why bodybuilders make horrible test subjects, right? Elite athletes make horrible test subjects and just don't do it for the most part, because guess what's going to happen when they're randomized to a treatment group that they don't want to be in? Bye-bye. But that randomization is important because now, once you have randomized people, you can assume that any different inherent characteristics of the subjects are also randomly distributed across these groups. any difference between the treatments in your outcomes, you can assume is due to the treatment and not different inherent characteristics. Whereas in a cohort, which is where we're following people for 10, 20 years, looking at, let's say, saturated fat intake and the risk of heart disease, we see, okay, saturated fat raises the risk of heart disease, but then the problem is, okay, Is it that, or are people who are more prone to heart disease have more of a taste for saturated fat perhaps, right? Or do people who tend to eat more saturated fat, are they also more likely to smoke, more likely to drink alcohol? I mean, you can co-variate out some of these confounding variables, but I have a hard time believing that you can co-variate out, you know, 20 odd variables. So that's why randomization is important. Now, Mendelian randomization basically relies on the fact that there are certain traits, and let's take LDL cholesterol for one, and the risk of heart disease, because I think this is where Mendelian randomization really shines. So, you have different polymorphisms on genes that cause people to naturally secrete more or less LDL. And those polymorphisms tend to be quite random, meaning that the change in that gene doesn't really affect metabolism in other areas. And so what you can do is you can look at these polymorphisms, look at the lifetime exposure of, for example, LDL cholesterol and the risk of cardiac events. And then you can, okay, since it's not a randomized control trial, but since these polymorphisms are random, you can assume that the inherent characteristics of those populations are also randomly distributed. And so, and then in this case, for example, this is actually what changed my mind about LDL cholesterol because I used to say, ah, it's not LDL, it's the HDL to LDL ratio. When you do that, you can pretty much draw a straight line through the lifetime exposure of LDL cholesterol and your risk of cardiovascular disease. So, that's about as good as we can get when it comes to things like mortality. But somebody going, well, we can't make any claims about, you know, because I was bringing up dietary fiber and how it's one of the best ways to lower your risk of mortality and heart disease. Well, you can't say that. There's not randomized control trials showing people who eat fiber live longer. I'm like, yeah, you're right. But then we can't make any claims about longevity at all then. And I think one of the important things to point out is that when it comes to cohort data, if something is an effect of like random distributions or characteristics. If something isn't a real effect in epidemiology or cohort data, you tend to see a pretty inconsistent appearance of it. Let me give you an example. Red meat and cancer, so like minimally processed red meat and cancer. It is not a consistent effect. Some studies say yes. Some studies say no. But when you look at the risk of cancer, heart disease, mortality, and dietary fiber, it's all on one side. It's all on one side. It's all to the side of beneficial, OK? Now, you can argue about how beneficial. But when you have, I mean, there was just an umbrella review that came out of 17 million participants that overwhelmingly showed. Jesus. benefits of dietary fiber, you have a really hard time convincing me that that is not a real effect. And just for people out there, when we do what are called meta-analyses, which are considered like the top tier of evidence, and umbrella reviews would actually technically be above that because an umbrella review is typically a review of multiple meta-analyses. My analyses basically take studies with similar criteria for the study and then attempt to form a consensus by combining the data set together. And usually they'll do what's called a forest plot. So let's take dietary fiber and the risk of mortality, for example. So you do a force plot, which there's a center line, and that center line basically is no effect. And then if you go to the right, for example, it's favors X. Let's say favors dietary fiber. Go to the left, it's in favor of low dietary fiber. When I say in favor of, I mean decreases the risk of mortality. If we did a forest plot of those studies, they're all on one side. It is very, very consistent, right? Just like another example that would be like, there's arguments about whether training volume matters for hypertrophy. And you can find studies where there's no difference between like low volume and higher volume. But you don't really find studies where low volume outperforms high volume over the long run. So what you see is the studies are clustered around the center line and quite a few of them are off to favoring more volume. So when you see something like that, again, that's where we go, okay, that's probably a real effect because it's pretty consistently on the center line or to one side of it. And I'll just give one more example. And this is also why it's important to not cherry pick or be wary of people who only cite a single study to support whatever they want.

Andres Preschel: Unless it's a meta-analysis or umbrella review.

Layne Norton: Well, I've got to be careful. You can do bad meta-analyses. I've seen people, if you If you change the inclusion criteria into a narrow window to show what you want to show, you can still fudge a meta-analysis. But the great thing about that is you'll see it in the methods. If you're a trained scientist, you'll be able to see it in the methods.

Andres Preschel: Is all of this in that handbook that you were describing for the rep subscribers?

Layne Norton: What's that?

Andres Preschel: You mentioned like you have a, you have a handbook for the reps community that helps them understand how to look at research and make sense of it.

Layne Norton: Yeah. It's called how to read research guide, the biling guide, how to read all this is there. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. So, um, we'll link to it in the notes. Yeah, so the other thing I would say is, I remember I ran a meta-analysis on the risk of smoking and adenocarcinoma, okay? And the overall summation of the effect of smoking on adenocarcinoma was like a 3 to 700% increased risk of adenocarcinoma. It was a massive increase in risk. But out of those 50-some studies, there were two that were not statistically different, that were actually slightly to the left of the center line, meaning there was a non-significant protective effect. I could just cite those two studies. tell people, look, it doesn't seem to affect the risk of adenocarcinoma and actually might be kind of protective. And oh, by the way, smoking reduces the risk of Parkinson's by 30 to 40% in studies, which, by the way, is very consistent in research studies, probably because of the nicotine. But, and I could say, see, smoking's healthy for you. And I could actually make that argument while omitting 95% of the data, right? So that's where this stuff is really difficult for the average Joe to pick out when they're listening to some of these influencers.

Andres Preschel: So on the topic of, you know, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases, and I, look, I mean, this is, I just want to amplify this before we move on. And I think it's very relevant and especially, you know, I recently did a genetic test and I found out I have a predisposition for Parkinson's. I also suffered with ADHD at a young age. I was medicated for it for over a decade. And when I first got that result in my genetic test, even though no one in my family has had Parkinson's, I freaked out. The first person I called was my mentor, who I mentioned earlier, Dr. Wesley Smith. He's the head of nutrition and physiology at UM. And I was freaking out. And he's like, hey man, it's all good, you know, relax, like lifestyle, you know, it helps prevent Parkinson's and, you know, all that good stuff. And then I called my best friend's girlfriend and I, she's a Parkinson's researcher. And she, she literally started laughing at me. She's like, Andres, you know, if there's anyone that's doing everything you need to do to prevent Parkinson's, it's you, like, you'll be fine. But I did take a look, that invited me to look at the literature and I found some studies. I can't cite them now. I actually tried to look for them again recently and I couldn't find them anywhere. I don't know if they were just like completely deleted off the face of the internet or what, but I couldn't find them. And it showed that the folks that had most recently quit smoking or had smoked the longest had the lowest incidence of Parkinson's. Um, I know that I get my predisposition from my dad's side and his dad was a heavy smoker who never had any, anything, you know, related to Parkinson's, any, any issues like that. So, I mean, maybe that was there, but who knows? The point is, I want to ask you, you know, what, you know, what you've seen. and how we can apply the framework that you have around research to understand what the broader implications are here and what folks that have these neurodegenerative diseases or are predisposed to them can do with this kind of information.

Layne Norton: Yeah, so I just first want to start out with saying that I'm not a neuroscientist or a brain researcher, and I'll try and limit my claims or scale to what I know, while also saying that this isn't my area of expertise. Thank you. You know, when it comes to smoking, I don't think there's anything that's protected about smoking itself. I think it likely is the nicotine that is part of the reason that people who smoke heavily have lower risk of Parkinson's. When it comes to genetic predisposition, I think There are some genetic polymorphisms and conditions that absolutely are massive risk factors. For example, you take breast cancer and the BRCA gene polymorphisms. If you have a certain mutation on the BRCA gene, the likelihood that you're gonna have breast cancer, I believe if you have that mutation, they typically recommend preemptively getting a mastectomy. because it is so powerful. But there's, at least from what I understand, there's not that many of those sorts of mutations out there that are that powerful. Obviously, there are genetic conditions that leave people diseased very young or die young, those sorts of things. I mean, that's, you know, those sorts of things are kind of like, as bad as it sounds, really bad roll of the dice, you know what I mean? Really bad roll of the dice in some situations. Other ones that are raising your risk, you know, I really liked my PhD advisor, he said this about obesity, but I think it applies to a lot of other conditions too. He said genetics just load the gun, it's behavior and lifestyle that pull the trigger.

Andres Preschel: And so,

Layne Norton: You know, I think about like my mother's side of the family. There's a lot of mental illness and there's a lot of cognitive and degenerative diseases. So there's dementia, bipolar, depression on that side of the family. I have ADHD as well. My son and daughter both have ADHD. My son is nonverbal autistic. So there's obviously, you know, some genetic component in that area. But like my mother, you know, she is, I mean, she's 70 this year and she's about as sharp as a tack. And she's had, she's actually lived with multiple loma for 11 years now, which is supposed to, when she got it, you were supposed to die in five years when she got it. And she's still kicking 11 years later, killing it. What's that?

Andres Preschel: You're helping her with some deadlifts?

Layne Norton: Yeah, well, mom, and to the point, you know, mom, she was always in shape. She, even if it wasn't resistance training, she was doing, you know, cardiovascular exercise or walking. She was never a big drinker. Like the most I ever saw her drink was maybe like three drinks at a time, you know, like she just was never, she never smoked. Her body weight was always under control, you know, so she hasn't gotten some of these neurodegenerative diseases like my grandmother did. I love my grandmother. She was an awesome person, but she was, relatively regular drinker, you know, and ended up struggling with dementia later in life. And that, you know, alcohol is a big risk factor for that. So I think it's one of those things that when I see some of these genetic tests come back, I only, I just worry about people kind of making it a foregone conclusion, you know? And the reality is it's not a foregone conclusion. And at the end of the day, if you stress about it, you're probably doing more of a disservice than you just control the controllables. Control the controllables and the rest is what it is. The rest is what it is. And I do think, honestly, stress management is a big part of things. I think that's a big part of staying healthy. I mean, even like, You know, when I was dealing with my back pain and hip pain and whatnot, honestly, the biggest lever for me, the two biggest levers for me that got me pain-free were getting better at stress management, psychological stress management, and learning how to manage my loading when I'd have a flare-up. and just being willing to regress and then walk it back up or regress and walk it back up. And now, I mean, I've gotten so good at it that when I have a flare-up, usually within two weeks, I'm back to full capacity because I just know how to manage it now. And those have been the biggest levers. And when I started digging into the Lunatron psychological stress, I mean, if you look at psychological stress and the risk of cancer, heart disease, mortality, I mean, it's pretty much a linear effect, your psychological stress and the risk of those diseases. And I haven't looked specifically, but I would not be surprised if neurodegenerative diseases were on there as well, and also autoimmune diseases, very strong correlation between autoimmune diseases and psychological stress.

Andres Preschel: I'll tell you what my impression of you at least what I see online is you're very passionate But you get very stressed out by these these influencers and quacks. So what are some of your go-to strategies to manage stress behind the scenes?

Layne Norton: Go-to strategies to make but well, I think the first thing is I learning how to stay emotionally regulated and not freak out. And that was something that I used to just get so spun up. You feel hot and sweaty and all those sorts of feelings that you get. And I still have stuff that stresses me out all the time, but I just kind of like learn how to, okay. All right. Like learn how to talk to myself about it. This is not life or death, even though my body wants to respond like this is life or death. How do I manage this? Um, you know, that sort of thing. And, um, I just found that, you know, learning how to calm myself down, go for a walk, breathe through it, as weird as it sounds, um, that stuff, you know, made a difference. I mean, I still get stressed out and I still get upset. I still don't react perfectly a lot of the time, but it's better than it used to be. And, um, just kind of learning how to talk to myself about those, those sorts of things.

Andres Preschel: Well, yeah, I mean the breath is very overlooked, but it's the most immediate way to innervate your nervous system and apply more parasympathetic influence. You know, you speak a lot about macronutrients and how we can and should adjust them for health, for changes in body composition, etc. And specifically, I want to learn about your take on micronutrients as it pertains to genetic reporting. So if we see that we're genetically predisposed, you know, how should our nutrition change and how efficacious are these genetic reports in motivating, you know, these changes?

Layne Norton: Yeah, I mean, I honestly don't know that much about the micronutrient requirements and how those change for certain genetic conditions. I mean, I do know that there seem to be certain things that, for example, vitamin D might help with. But it's so convoluted by the fact that vitamin D tends to be a proxy for diet quality. And so people who have better overall diet quality tend to take in more vitamin D. And so is it the vitamin D, or is it the fact that they have better intentionality and diet quality? But I think there are some overarching things in nutrition about what is sort of, quote unquote, best practices, right? And for me, it boils down to a few big buckets, and those buckets are One, eating an appropriate amount of calories for what your goal is and what your daily energy expenditure is. If you are somebody who's obese and you want to lose weight, well, you want to be in a calorie deficit. If you have low lean mass, higher fat mass, and you're pretty sedentary, you don't have a really big shovel to dig with. You know what I mean? Contrarily, if you're a high-level athlete with a lot of lean mass, you've got a big shovel. In a lot of cases, your difficulty is keeping weight on versus taking it off. So those appropriate amount of calories can be very different from person to person. Then once you have that figured out, eating an amount of protein that is appropriate for whatever your goals are for strength and lean mass, we do see the high-protein diets have benefits in terms of hypertrophy, strength, possibly performance, possibly quality of life, longevity. But you get most of those benefits in kind of that like 1.6 grams per kilo of body weight, which is around 0.7 grams per pound. Every time I say kilos, people get mad and I'm like, you can't divide by 2.2. So, you know, that's great. If you're somebody who is concerned with trying to be the most muscular person you possibly can be, maybe you skew a little bit closer to that, you know, 2.2 or 2.5 grams per kilogram of body weight. And then once you've got your calories, your protein goals, then I really focus on, all right, make sure you're getting enough fiber in per day. I think the recommendations are like 14 grams of fiber per 1,000 calorie nutrition intake. I think that's a relatively good metric. I wouldn't say the benefits of fiber cap out, just like I actually don't think the benefits of protein protein metabolism cap out, I think they just become such marginal returns that they are difficult to pick out in research studies. What I mean by that is, you probably get 90 to 95% of the benefits up to a certain point. And then to get the last 5% of the benefits, it requires a disproportionate amount of intake. And I think fiber is probably the same way. But if we look at the research studies, around like 20 to 25 grams of fiber per day, there's a pretty defined breakpoint. where you're getting most of those benefits. So I tell people, try to get 25 grams per day. If you can get more, great. But at minimum, try to get 25 grams per day. And then as far as carbohydrates and fats go, they're essentially energy filler. If you're in some of the more extreme sport categories, you know, endurance or sprinting or whatnot, you might want to skew, you know, a little bit more carbohydrate heavy. If you're like ultra endurance, maybe skew a little more fat heavy, but the research on that, I mean, from what I've seen, the research suggests that you can perform just as well on a high fat diet, lower carb, but you don't necessarily perform better. So I kind of look at fats, carbohydrates. If you're not on the extreme end of really high-carb, low-fat or really low-carb, sorry, low-carb, high-fat or low-fat, high-carb, if you're not in either of those extremes, it's pretty much energy filler. Your body can use both. kind of boil down to, and in terms of body composition, doesn't really make much of a difference in the research studies in either overfeeding or weight loss studies. If you equate protein and calories, the compositional outcomes tend to be the same. Although I will say, if it skews one way at all, it tends to skew a little bit more in favor of lower fat, higher carb for compositional outcomes. But I think that it's pretty much null.

Andres Preschel: And let's say someone, let's say somebody tuning in is well versed in how to appropriate their macros as it pertains to their fitness and their performance goals, right? And let's say that they have, you know, a pretty good foundation of knowledge for nutrition and for fitness. If we consider the fact that someone like yourself, you know, you're very grounded in the literature. How would you define the cutting edge and and what's your relationship with it? And where do you think other folks that have these very ambitious health and fitness goals and feel like they've mastered these fundamentals? Where can they go for? You know more exciting knowledge so they can you know treat themselves like guinea pigs with

Layne Norton: So I think this is where it's difficult, because science is supposed to be the cutting edge. And in some ways it is, and in some ways it's not. And what I mean by that is, I think a great example of this happened during the pandemic. I said right when it was happening, I'm like, this is going to be really bad for science. Because usually the way science works is, take any topic, bunch of research studies get done, scientists debate at scientific conferences and in journals for decades. And then after one, two, three decades, we come out and we go, we think this, this is what we think. And we have a bunch of data to back it up. And when the pandemic happened, it was like, we had nothing. We were trying to build the ship while we're trying to sail the ship. And unfortunately, the average person isn't equipped to peer behind the curtain of what happens with science, which is a bunch of us disagreeing over shit, right? A bunch of us disagreeing over it, eventually, usually, you know, we come to a consensus. And again, consensus doesn't mean everybody agrees. There will always be dissenting opinions. They're always any topic. I'm sure you could find dissenting opinions with experts on smoking. I'm sure you could. Right. But. The reality is we tend to figure it out over time. And I said, you know, when the pandemic happened, I'm like, we're going to look back in 20 years and we'll go, well, we should have done this, right? We should have done this. This would have been best practice. But we didn't know. We didn't have a blueprint, you know? And I, like, just to be honest, like when the lockdowns happened, I was in favor of the lockdowns at first because I'm like, okay, well, we don't really know much about this thing. We don't have widespread testing. We have no real way to treat it. Yeah, we should wait until we know more. But then like, now that turns out that those lockdowns probably didn't really help that much. And they hurt us in ways that we couldn't have foreseen. But what are you going to do? If you're the government, you have a very difficult job. If you're a scientist, you have a very difficult job because you're trying to do the least amount of harm, or at least what you think will be the least amount of harm. And you don't have a crystal ball to see how this is going to play out. So when it comes to cutting edge for performance nutrition, I promise I'm circling this back, you have to realize that scientific studies are big blunt instruments. They're going to inform you of what not to do more than what they will inform you what to do. And scientific studies report averages, means. But you, an athlete, a high performer, is not a mean. You are an individual data point. And if you're familiar with Gaussian distribution curves, which is basically like, you know, if you have any specific treatment, 60, 70% of people will fall under a certain way that they respond to that treatment. And then you're gonna have, you know, people who are low responders and high responders, and then you're gonna have people at the extremes, right? And a great example of this is like resistance training. I remember, I'm friends with Michael Zorto, so I don't know if you're familiar with him, who's a professor at FAU. He's done a lot of great work on hypertrophy and strength. And he said they had one individual, they did a 12-week training study, and this person was squatting like 220 pounds when they came into the lab. After 12 weeks, they were squatting 450 as a one rep max. And I think he said the average gain on the squat was something like 40 pounds during that study, right? This guy put on like over 200 pounds on his squat. So all that to say, if we're doing good evidence-based practices as coaches, what we're going to do is when we have a client who comes on, we're going to start out with an idea of where we're going to start them based on the evidence, based on what the averages say. But then we're going to tweak things. We're going to mess with things and see what happens. And I'll also say this.

Andres Preschel: To figure out what works best for them.

Layne Norton: Yeah. And, and honestly, I think one of the things that is drastically, drastically, drastically underrated for what works best for the individual is personal preference. What gets somebody excited to go do, to go train. Adherence. To get after it. Yeah. Cause adherence is, is the mother of all results. Um, and even like, you know, I, I, when I was still competing in bodybuilding, I would still have kind of trained like a power lifter quite a bit of the time. And people would go, why are you doing that? And I go, because I know it might like me doing a three rep set might not be best for hypertrophy. But it gets me really excited to go to the gym and I train really hard. So if I'm gonna do that versus going in and being bored to death with normal bodybuilding training, maybe for me that style of training is better for hypertrophy. Because for me as the individual, that's what gets me fired up to train. And I think that's a lot of that common thread I was talking about earlier is you can take The best athletes in the world, with rare exceptions, they have two things in common. Yes, they are very genetically gifted, and also they work really freaking hard. You got some exceptions to that, but you're all timers. You very rarely will find the best in certain sports. who didn't work really hard. And it's difficult to work really hard if you don't enjoy overall what you're doing. Now, I say that like, I'm sure there are days that Kobe went into the gym, that NJ went in, and they didn't want to be there. You know, you've got to do those days. I have those days myself. But overall, I love getting into the gym. Like, I love doing that. And I'm sure overall, they love being on the basketball court. Otherwise, they wouldn't have done it so much. You know, or wouldn't have been able to get to the level that they got to. So yes, I think there are individual differences and individual responses, but I think a lot of it boils down to just how do you get the most out of your athlete in terms of adherence and also buy-in? Because if they don't trust the process, if they don't trust you, it's going to be hard to get results out of them. And again, as coaches, the best coaches I've ever had were people that I wanted to make proud. I wanted them to be proud of me. And I think, you know, especially when it comes to coaching, I always say there's like, um, four pillars of effective coaching. Um, let me see if I can remember them all, but, uh, um, leadership, accountability, empathy, and connection. Okay. If you, if you're lacking any of those things, it's going to be difficult to get the most out of your athlete. And, you know, leadership is, you know, for example, I used to tell clients, Hey, listen, I will never ask you to do anything that I have not done or would not be willing to do myself. I'll never ask that of you. Um, and then, uh, connection is actually giving a crap about the human being that you're, you're dealing with. Because one of the things I had to learn through coaching, because I am kind of robotic about my training and nutrition. It's not a big deal for me, but most people aren't robots. Most people. There's emotional tie-ins with this stuff and you got to deal with their emotions. And then that kind of ties into the empathy portion as well. If you're just like the drill sergeant yelling, you know, tyrant, I mean, that works for some, but it's going to be hard to have sustained success over time. If you look at most of the best coaches across disciplines, yeah, they had that fire where they could get on you and yell at you and that sort of thing. But they also knew how to talk to their players when that wasn't the right move.

Andres Preschel: It's almost like they know how to inspire that intrinsic motivation.

Layne Norton: Yes, exactly. Because if you're just afraid of a tyrant coach, I mean, there may be some people who respond well to that, but there's also going to be some other people who don't respond well at all to that. So, yeah, I think those four things are very important for effective coaching and getting the most out of your athletes. and also just being willing to try different things because at the end of the day, you're not dealing with a research study, you're dealing with a case study.

Andres Preschel: Let's take a quick break because this ties right into today's topic. Recovery is something we all care about, and one reason it slows down as we age is mitochondrial decline. Timeline Nutrition's longevity gummies with MitoPure deliver Urolithin A, which activates mitophagy, your body's natural process of replacing worn-out mitochondria with new, efficient ones. In clinical trials, people improved energy and even increased muscle strength by 12% over 16 weeks. No stimulants, no gimmicks, just healthier cells doing their job. You can try them with 20% off at timeline.com slash undress. Again, that's timeline.com slash undress, A-N-D-R-E-S. Your sales will thank you. Um, but hey, I wanted to actually elaborate a little more on this topic. Um, and it's pretentious. This is my sound. There's a lot of people that I know that I associate myself with that are tuning to this podcast right now. That consider themselves, you know, outliers or they're, they're not the average they're, they're, they're, they don't want to, um, apply, you know, science that's for the masses, so to speak. Um, which this obviously can be a controversial take, but for these kinds of people, right, how should they approach literature or how should they approach, call it their own, you know, individual and of one clinical trial, what conditions do they need to set and how should they create that framework to, to bring that intention to life with the right process?

Layne Norton: Yeah, I always say I think the guidelines and the themes are similar for elite athletes versus your regular Joe. It's just how hard you press on the gas pedal. Either way, the brake is the brake and the gas pedal is the gas pedal. But in the case of elite athlete, you're hammered down, whereas with your average Joe, you might just be cruising along. So adherence has to be the foundation of anything, making something a lifestyle, consistency, like nothing works if you don't work. Nothing works if you're not consistent. And I always tell people, you know, just think about the diets you've done or the training you've done when it didn't work. Did it really not work when you were absolutely consistent, showing up, And for the most part, you know, it's when people get lackadaisical, or stuff comes up, or stress happens in their life, or whatever it is, it makes it difficult to be adherent. And so I think that has to be the baseline, right? Is consistently showing up. And I'll tell people all the time, like, people say, oh, I got a bad night of sleep, should I skip the gym? And I'm like, okay, well, sometimes, yeah, I mean, you can shift a training session and auto-regulate and whatnot, But man, if I'd skipped training every time I didn't feel good, I would not be where I am today physically. And so I think sometimes you just gotta do stuff you don't like to do even though you don't wanna do it. And I think that's one of the things of, feelings are, I don't wanna say feelings are unimportant, they're not unimportant.

Andres Preschel: You have a shirt that says data greater than feelings, what do you mean?

Layne Norton: But if you're only relying on that to make decisions,

Andres Preschel: Not for sure.

Layne Norton: It's going to be tough because the things that feel good in the short term, junk food, staying up, watching TV, playing video games, you know, that sort of stuff that feels good in the short term, spending money on stuff you don't need, screws your life up in the long term.

Andres Preschel: Is you the illusion of success or of achievement or of connection, right? There's these, it's funny, I just made a post about this, like the seven or eight illusions that men deal with and it's like porn, gambling, video games, doom scrolling, dating apps, you know, they all give us this like impression, but it's very short sighted and you have to follow the mission, not the mood. So data over feelings, but feelings are still somewhat relevant.

Layne Norton: Well, and, and, and I think one of the things I always tell people is typically whatever is easy in the short term makes things hard in the longterm and vice versa. You do hard stuff in the short term, makes your life easier in the longterm. Right. Like saving money sucks when you're on a certain budget. Right. Like, um, yeah, like people all the time. Cause I, you know, I still drive my car from graduate school. Um, but I live in a really nice house. You know, my dream was to always live on the water and, and, um, you know, I live in a nice house on the water, but like, I'm very pretty, pretty frugal with pretty much everything else. Um, and. you know, when I was saving, I'm like, I would go, it's not that I don't like a nice car. Yeah, I think Bugattis look cool. I think Rolls Royces look cool. I think Ferraris look cool. I think all that stuff looks cool. I think Range Rovers look cool. Yeah, if it fell in my lap, sure, you know? But I'm like, am I willing to take, you know, 100, 200 grand away from things like, you know, experiences or my kids or whatever? I'm not. Now, again, I think Rolexes look cool. And I'm not dogging on anybody who spends money on that. Everybody has their own values, what they want to do. But for me, I'm like, all right, what really makes me happy? And it's never been It's never, it's never been that stuff. It's being around people who give a crap about me, you know, it's doing things that I find meaningful, uh, pursuing goals and achieving those goals and working through obstacles. And I always, I was trying to tell my daughter this, my daughter's eight and she's having a hard time understanding why she should go to school and, uh, and study and whatnot. And, um, you know, I said, honey, When you, when the weird thing about life is when you look back on the things that are most fun to you, you will actually remember the things that at the time were the hardest because you will have a lot of pride that you worked through those setbacks or the feeling of insecurity or whatever it was, you know? And that's true for me. Like the, when I've won world championships or set world records or got my PhD, the stuff I remember wasn't like the, yes, I remember the adulation of doing the thing, but what I actually remember fondly is all the crap I had to trudge through leading up to those moments. That's what actually sticks out to me. And if you don't allow yourself to go through those things, you'll never have those moments. And I don't want to like sound like, oh, I never play video games or I never, you know, doom scroll or whatever. Yeah, of course I've done all that stuff, you know, but it's, it's, is it a habit for me? Is it something that is, you know, going on all the time? And I think that's where you've got to start, right? And it's tough. And like, you know, resistance training is hard, especially if you haven't done it before, right? And it's uncomfortable and it hurts. But it was funny, I was watching Chris Williamson, he was getting interviewed by Pierce Morgan and they were talking about how to- What's that?

Andres Preschel: He's been on the show, he's a great guy.

Layne Norton: Yeah, I like Chris. And I agreed with him here, which was, if you want to build mental resilience and mental toughness, start with physical toughness. Because it's hard to have one without the other, right? Do physical stuff. And I can tell you, like, I agree with him. It's hard to think your way out of problems. You know, you gotta go do stuff. You gotta go do hard stuff. And I think when you do hard stuff and you work through obstacles and setbacks, it just creates some scar tissue that, you know, you feel more resilient. Like, oh wow, I thought that thing would break me and it didn't actually break me.

Andres Preschel: Like, I've got to- Sorry to interrupt, I just want to amplify this. You elicit neuroplasticity on the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, on the willpower center of the brain.

Layne Norton: Yeah, I mean, I've been through probably, I don't know, half dozen things now in my life where I'm like, if you told me this was gonna happen, I'd be like, no, I'd fall apart. If you told me I was 18, I'd be like, no, I'd fall apart, you know? But then you realize, oh, that really, like, in some cases in one period of my life, literally all the things I was scared of happening happened. And I came out of it better, you know? And so now when hard things come up, It's not that I clap my hands and jump around and go, yay, this hard thing, it still sucks. It's still something I don't wanna deal with. But I also realize, okay, I'm gonna learn something out of this. I'm gonna carry something forward out of this. Because if it doesn't kill me, I can get better from this.

Andres Preschel: Right, that's the recurring pattern is the hard things are going to continue to show up, but it's how you show up that allows you to derive something positive and allows you to gain perspective and resilience for the next hard thing, which is inevitable. There's always going to be hard things. It's how you prepare for them and how you bat when it's your turn to swing.

Layne Norton: I think Bruce Lee said, you know, don't pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a hard life, you know. There we go. And here's the other catch is not everybody's going to like, lose a kid or lose a spouse or something just, you know, absolutely horrifically traumatic, right? But everybody's going to have something that they perceive is traumatic because for better or for worse, our minds find problems. You know, our minds find things that are damaging. And so if you are trying to construct a world or a context around you where bad things don't happen, it's going to be really disappointing and really, you're going to deal with more trauma because of it. But if you construct the view of, I am resilient, and if I'm not dead, I will find a way through this, then even if bad things come to pass, you can still get back to a good place. It doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt. It doesn't mean it's not going to suck. but the more, it's kind of like progressive overload for life. The more hard stuff you do, the more hard stuff you can tolerate.

Andres Preschel: You might as well go out of your way to do it deliberately so you can prepare.

Layne Norton: Yeah. And that's, you know, like, um, I am not on the, you know, I love David Goggins. I love David Goggins. I am not as extreme as that. Right. Like I think he's got a little, there's some wiring up there, you know, but, but, but I agree with what he says. I don't, I don't, He's like, you don't understand. I do this because I used to be the weakest person in the world. I used to be the most scared, weak, insecure person. I go out here and I run like this and I make myself do this stuff so that when I get a phone call and find out something horrible's happened, I don't fall apart. I can still show up. And I think when I first read that, I didn't fully internalize that. And now getting older, I think you can never, You're better to give yourself a controlled dose of a stressor, learn how to handle a stressor, and then when you get something that is out of your control, you can still respond to it better.

Andres Preschel: Well said. And I think this is actually a pretty good segue into the next topic I want to cover with you, which is related to your book. And I know one of the underlying themes is how even yet muscle is still extremely underrated. And I want to speak specifically about, you know, GLP-1s and this sexy class of weight loss medication that people are popping like candy. I want to understand the folks that are on these GLP-1s that are losing muscle at an insane rate. What is there to say about the mental willpower that they're leaving on the table as it pertains to the topic that we just discussed? And then metabolically, what are they leaving on the table? What do these people on GLP-1s need to know about muscle mass?

Layne Norton: So I think the first thing I would say with GLP-1s is I don't think that GLP-1s necessarily cause more lean mass loss than regular dieting. I think the issue with GLP-1s is, because if you look at the studies where they don't have people resistance train or exercise and they have them lose weight, you're looking anywhere from like 25% to 40% of what's lost gets lost from lean. And if you look at the studies in GLP-1s, they're pretty much in that range. The first thing is, if you're just using it as a Band-Aid and you're not gonna resistance strain, you're gonna be dealing with some of the same problems.

Andres Preschel: The second thing is- I'm so sorry. Before you continue, I want to show people the downstream effect. If they lose a significant amount of muscle because they don't pair that with resistance training, by the time they get to, let's say, their goal weight, now their resting metabolic weight is so low and their insulin sensitivity might be so compromised that they might have set themselves way back. Now they can yo-yo their weight back up and they have other issues they have to deal with.

Layne Norton: Yeah, losing lean mass can lower metabolic rate. It worsens insulin sensitivity, although that would be compensated for partially, at least, by the fact that they are losing body fat, which is going to raise insulin sensitivity. But the best case scenario is you maintain as much lean mass as possible. And lean mass is not just there to move stuff. Our muscle mass, for most people, it's about 40%. Their skeletal muscle mass is about 40% of their weight as an organ. And something interesting that I didn't kind of circle around until recently was, even though it's 40% of our body weight, how often do you hear about people getting diagnosed with muscle cancers? It's incredibly rare. And that's because muscle is actually a very inhospitable environment for disease. There are very few diseases that can take root in muscle. I mean, you have like muscular dystrophy and those sorts of things, but we think that those are kind of like autoimmune diseases, maybe with a genetic component. But if you look at what muscle does, I was looking at, I think it was cardiovascular disease mortality, and they had four different groups. You had low muscle mass, low fat mass, high fat mass, low muscle mass, high muscle mass, high fat mass, and high muscle mass, low fat mass. Now, by far, the group that was most protected against cardiovascular disease mortality was high muscle mass, low fat mass. They were the most protected. The next most protected, a lot of people would probably think low fat mass. But it was actually high muscle mass, high fat mass was the next most protected. So muscle was actually more protective against cardiovascular disease mortality than having low fat mass if you also had low muscle mass. And then, of course, the worst group was high fat mass, low muscle mass. But we've been focused, especially in females for so long, on like skinny, skinny, be thin, you know, try to be thin. And if you look at the research data on sarcopenia and the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality, cancer mortality, death from infection, how long you're in the ICU if you have something bad happen to you, even abdominal trauma. And there's also case studies of people who are gunshot victims who have more muscle mass tend to have better survival rates. And then like sepsis, I think people with low muscle mass have a 300% increased risk of mortality from sepsis if they get an infection. So muscle is a very inhospitable environment for disease. And we used to think about muscle as, oh, all it does is move our bones around. And now we know that muscle is an endocrine organ. It secretes myokines, which communicate with other tissues, which communicates with your brain. And I think I read that people with low muscle mass, sarcopenia, have like a 70% increased risk of developing dementia or Alzheimer's. And muscle is protective against cognitive decline. People who resistance train, it improves their symptoms with bipolar or schizophrenia, improves their symptoms, proves symptoms of depression, improves cognition, proves memory. We're just finding that muscle is not just for moving around and looking good. If you have more muscle on balance, you're typically healthier overall.

Andres Preschel: Excellent. And as far as exercise for the brain, what have you seen regarding the increased baseline of dopamine as it pertains to fitness training and weightlifting?

Layne Norton: So I don't know much about dopamine. And from what I understand, it's really difficult to measure because you're kind of trying to measure brain levels of dopamine rather than what's in circulation. But I would not be surprised If exercise improves your sensitivity to reward systems, you know, actually one of the interesting things about GLP-1s that's worth noting is they're actually finding benefits for like different forms of addiction as well. It seems to help control the impulse in of the brain in addition to improving satiety. Um, so some people they've actually said to like, oh, you know, what happened was, yes, I felt more satiated, but it calmed down the food noise. I stopped ruminating and thinking about food all the time. Um, and yeah, there, there's some preliminary, uh, research, I believe looking at like gambling addiction or, uh, different forms of addiction and possibly finding some benefits. So, um, you know, and then when it comes to exercise, I don't know this research specifically, but I would guess that exercise helps with impulse control as well because it just seems to improve a lot of the metrics in the brain, but I haven't looked in that specifically. But there's not a whole lot of things that exercise does. It's either neutral or positive on pretty much everything.

Andres Preschel: So what is a common practice that comes to mind in the health and fitness industry right now that science has clearly disproven, but people still absolutely swear by?

Layne Norton: People absolutely swear by. Man, I know the one that just popped into my head, but it's probably not the best example. I would say ice baths. That's the first thing that pops to my head. Not that they're necessarily bad, but the research on them for recovery is yeah, it shows it might decrease soreness, might improve recovery a little bit, but not really compared to other recovery modalities like sauna, or active recovery, or massage, or those sorts of things. And it does appear to pretty clearly blunt hypertrophy. Now people have said, oh yeah, that's only if you do it right after your training session. No, the research studies have- And eight hours, isn't it? Well, the research studies so far have just looked at post-training, but I'm not aware of any that looked at pre-training or at a different time of the day. So I can't really make that, we can't make that claim that, oh, it doesn't blunt it. We just don't know. And so maybe it doesn't if you do it at a different time. But we know it inhibits mTOR signaling, and that's usually elevated for anywhere from 16 to 48 hours after resistance training.

Andres Preschel: MTOR, which is muscle protein synthesis, for those who don't know,

Layne Norton: Correct, yeah, it's part of that signaling pathway. So my guess would be that the timing might not even matter that much if you're doing it consistently. But I could be wrong. And then also, people don't realize this, actually cold water exposure raises appetite. There's some pretty clear evidence that cold water exposure and cold water exercise raise appetite quite a bit.

Andres Preschel: Like I was looking at the study- By inducing hypoglycemia, is it like your body may be shivering,

Layne Norton: Yeah, I'm not sure what the mechanism is, but it does appear that cold water may raise your metabolic rate a little bit, but we're talking like one calorie per minute of cold water exposure. But then when they let people eat ad libitum, They tend to over-consume by several hundred calories compared to control groups. Now, all that being said, maybe a decent tool for people who have low appetite, maybe it's a tool for that. But yeah, I think it's been very over-hyped. Now, if you like it and you like doing it, Hey, no worries. If you're not interested in being the most muscular, strongest human being you can possibly be, then knock yourself out. But I think it's pretty overhyped.

Andres Preschel: So yeah, I think maybe elite athletes that aren't looking to gain muscle but need to diminish inflammation because they have back-to-back performances perhaps. But yeah, with what I've seen, I agree with you. I think it's very much overdone. And a lot of people that do it are the kind of people that kind of, they do it all and they're doing the fasting and the caloric restriction and the HIIT training. And it's just like, it's almost like doing more harm than good. You know, still putting their hormones, they're lowering their T and diminishing mTOR for muscle protein synthesis.

Layne Norton: Another thing that popped in my mind was actually stretching for injury prevention. The research data on that is extremely underwhelming. Yes, if you have really poor flexibility, You have increased risk of injury, but if you are doing resistance training through a full range of motion, you will get improved flexibility and that will protect you. But in terms of beyond like an actual just a warm up where you're getting your heart rate up, there's not really great evidence that static stretching reduces the risk of injury, which a lot of people just accept that as true.

Andres Preschel: Yeah. And if you activate those Golgi tendon organs, and then you go and try to do a strength training session, you're going to get injured because it's the opposite of muscle contraction is you're relaxing it completely. I like to do the dynamic stretching perhaps, and maybe static stretching towards the end once I'm warm and elastic, but never the other way around. Yeah. Great. Um, so, and what would you say, I mean, at the top of your head is, is one piece of evidence that most people wouldn't want to hear, but that everybody needs to understand if you want to get healthier and fitter.

Layne Norton: One piece. You can't get your way around personal responsibility. And even like, you know, people are saying, well, GLP-1s, you know, they're still, they're not raising people's metabolic rates. It's people are eating less, you know? So it's still, it's still kind of forcing a lifestyle change. So you're not, you're not going to get the results without some kind of lifestyle change. You got, you gotta, you gotta do the work. We've been trying to find an exercise and a pill for a long time, and there's nothing like mechanotransduction. It's just, maybe one day we'll find it, but we haven't found it yet. So, a lot of people, they wanna blame the government, they wanna blame food companies, they wanna blame all these different people, and I'm not saying that none of those things have culpability in any of this stuff, but the reality is, Nothing the government does is going to fundamentally change your health. You change your health. You change your life. I like Dave Ramsey, who's a financial guy. He has a lot of sayings that I actually use for people with fitness. But one of the things he said is, if people cared about what happened in their house as much as they did the White House, their lives would be a lot better off. And I think that that applies across the board to many things. But I think it's convenient for people to want to blame not just the government, but other entities that are beyond their control because then they don't have responsibility to fix it. The responsibility is going to be on somebody else.

Andres Preschel: And what would you say? I mean, this is a loaded question, so please forgive me and we can definitely keep it concise and discuss it maybe in the future. But would you say some of the overall biggest positives and negatives are, you know, with the Maha movement, make America healthy again?

Layne Norton: So I think the positives are that people are talking about this stuff. I think that's positive. Talking to food companies about formulations and whatnot. But I think that what I've seen so far, this might be a case of good intentions that actually may lead to worse outcomes. And let me give an example of what I mean. Because I've been critical of, OK, the average caloric consumption in the United States is 3,500 calories a day, the average physical activity is less than 20 minutes. Those are the levers we need to worry about. That is the big problem. And none of the things that have been done so far are even coming close to addressing that problem. Now, I like the idea of reinstituting the physical fitness testing and that sort of stuff and encouraging activity in schools, all for that. Big fan. The problem with some of these other things that they've been doing, like taking out, well, we got food companies take out red dye 40. And people say, well, see, it's a step in the right direction. I go. I don't even, like the evidence to me is not convincing that this is a negative at all. And even if it is, here's the problem. The foods that that's in, like say Froot Loops is taking out Red Dye 40 now. Now that it doesn't have Red Dye 40, Froot Loops will be advertising that because they're not just doing this because they, out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it's gonna improve their bottom line. And now what the average person hears is, Froot Loops are healthy now, they're healthier now, so I can eat more of them. Or Coca-Cola I think is moving from using high fructose corn syrup to cane sugar, which is just regular sucrose. So they've actually done this research. This research has been done in humans where they exchange high fructose corn syrup for sucrose in a one-to-one ratio and it does absolutely nothing for health. did not improve metabolic health, did not improve liver fat, appetite, insulin sensitivity, nothing. Nothing improved. But now there are going to be people going, oh, Coca-Cola is healthy again. I can have Coca-Cola. No, it's still soda. It's still hyper palatable, energy dense. And some people say, well, I like the way the cane sugar one tastes better. Well, then you're going to drink more of it. Like this could actually lead to a worse outcome if people think it's better for them and it tastes better.

Andres Preschel: It goes back to adherence, right?

Layne Norton: Right. Like this is a bad thing. So I think that's the… That is like the possibly unintended downstream consequences of stuff. People will say to me, everything's so politicized now and I consider myself an independent. I come from a family of conservatives and I would probably say I tend to vote more that way because I'm a fiscal conservative, socially liberal. you know i just think like things like now it's well you're in like if i say anything you're in the pocket of this person or whatever yeah it's like no i just got a different opinion man based on these things and then people who are against the maha movement they'll say like well like you know they're purposely trying to destroy american health care no i don't think that either i don't think that i think but i think the most dangerous people are people who have good intentions, who truly believe what they're doing is the right thing, who make bad decisions because of their belief systems. So I have no doubt that the Maha movement has the best of intentions, but that doesn't mean it's not going to lead to negative outcomes and that's my concern.

Andres Preschel: Well said. Last question here before we sign off. What do you have to say about intuitive eating?

Layne Norton: pretty good evidence for it helping with People with eating disorders, anorexia, kind of trying to restore intuitive hunger cues. Also people with binge eating, kind of restoring that relationship with food. The problem is it has been co-opted by people trying to sell like intuitive eating as like a weight loss solution. That is not what it's intended for. It has never been intended for that and it is not a good option for that. Some people do lose weight on intuitive eating because they get more in touch with their internal hunger signals and that helps them, you know, not be so black and white and off the rails. But you have to understand, the purpose of intuitive eating is to reestablish a good relationship with food not to lose weight or improve body composition. If it happens, if your body composition improves, it does so passively, but it is not a tool intended for that.

Andres Preschel: Hmm. Well said. Wow. Thank you. Um, and then the, the last is, is like, keep it super short and brief before you actually sign off here. I asked this, I asked this question to every, every guest on my show. You can't escape it no matter what. Um, if you could put a word message or phrase on a billboard somewhere in the world, what would it say? Where would you put it?

Layne Norton: Where would I put it? on one billboard, I mean, probably Times Square, right? Most people get seen by most people. How did Gus say the moon once? Oh, the moon, that's smart. Maybe Elon Musk could make a really big projector and project it into the sky, you know? Probably focus on the things that you can control. You have, you have a certain amount of, you have a certain amount of control over things and everything else. I mean, I'm not perfect with it. I still worry about some things that I can't control, but for the most part, I bring myself back to center of, well, that's above my pay grade. You know, like, um, I know like I can, like anybody watched, I stopped turning on the news. Um, cause I don't want to, you know, be convinced that. walking outside my house is unsafe and I'm going to die in some horrific way and that we're on the brink of thermonuclear war. Again, I'm going to do the stuff that I can, like I'm going to wear my seatbelt, drive a safe car, I'm not going to smoke. I'm going to do the things I can do to control my stuff, but then the universe is random and if something bad happens, it happens. It sucks, but I can't spend my days worrying about that because it's above my pay grade.

Andres Preschel: One of my favorite things about this show, man, is I think you said on a total three times that you don't know. It's always beyond your lane and your name is Lane Norton, so you know your lanes.

Layne Norton: Again, I think, you know, scope of practice, one of the things that I really People will say things like, oh, you won't believe anything unless it's a PubMed citation, or you'll dog on anything that doesn't have a PubMed citation. I said, that's not true. It's not true. If somebody says, hey, there's no evidence for this, but here's what I've observed, and here's what I think. I have absolutely no problem with that. Maybe I'll push back on you a little bit, but I don't think that's, like, scamming or chauvinism. I think that requires a lot of humility to say, you know, I'm not sure, but here's what I think. And I do that all the time. I'll tell people all the time, look, I'll give you two answers. I'll give you, here's what the research says, and then here's, if you injected me with true serum, what I really think. And I'll do those. And I think that that's totally appropriate, and I've got no problem with that because Like, that's fine. It's fine to have an opinion, but just say that it's an opinion. Don't say, studies say, or whatever it is. Like, just say it's your opinion.

Andres Preschel: Well said. Lane, this has been great. Thank you so much.

Layne Norton: You're welcome, buddy. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Of course.

Andres Preschel: Thanks for listening and thanks again to Timeline Nutrition for sponsoring the show. If you want to stay strong and energized as you age, try their longevity gummies at timeline.com slash undress. Again, you get 20% off and trust me, your cells will thank you.