Welcome to Episode 351 of The Intermittent Fasting Podcast, hosted by Melanie Avalon, author of What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine and Vanessa Spina, author of Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight.
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SHOW NOTES
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Listener Q&A: Shelley - Does eating alot of protein help with sleep?
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TRANSCRIPT
(Note: This is generated by AI with 98% accuracy. However, any errors may cause unintended changes in meaning.)
Melanie Avalon:
Welcome to Episode 351 of the Intermittent Fasting Podcast. If you want to burn fat, gain energy, and enhance your health by changing when you eat, not what you eat with no calorie counting, then this show is for you. I'm Melanie Avalon, biohacker, author of "What, When, Wine" and creator of the supplement line AvalonX. And I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Spina, sports nutrition specialist, author of "Keto Essentials" and creator of the Tone Breath Ketone Analyzer and Tone Lux Red Light Therapy Bannals. For more on us, check out ifpodcast.com, melanieavalon.com, and ketogenicgirl.com. Please remember, the thoughts and opinions on this show do not constitute medical advice or treatment. To be featured on the show, email us your questions to questions@ifpodcast.com. We would love to hear from you. So pour yourself a mug of black coffee, a cup of tea, or even a glass of wine, if it's that time, and get ready for the Intermittent Fasting Podcast.
Melanie Avalon:
Hi, everybody, and welcome. This is episode number 351 of the Intermittent Fasting podcast. I'm Melanie Avalon, and I'm here Vanessa Spina.
Vanessa Spina:
Hi, everyone.
Melanie Avalon:
What is new in your life, Vanessa?
Vanessa Spina:
I mean, seeing as we're now in 2024, I have a new baby. What else is happening? I'm really excited for this new year that has arrived, and 2023 was absolutely amazing. So I'm very excited about what's to come in 2024. But yeah, what's new with you?
Melanie Avalon:
Well, this is funny. No? Here's a question, because I actually got an email. I'll do a shout out because I know he listens to the show. Damon, who's awesome. He's actually a moderator in both two of my Facebook groups and my if Biohackers group and my Lumen CGM Aura. I have a group for all of those different devices. He was commenting on the time shift, how we record a while back and we talk about things in the past, but it's actually a different time. And he said he likes hearing what we're doing, even though it's in the past. This would be a good poll. I should poll the audience. Do they want to hear what's actually happening, even if it's way outdated, like around holidays and stuff, or do they want to hear stuff relevant to that time? Yes.
Vanessa Spina:
So for listeners, I was just being silly because it's the end of October for us, but I know that this is airing in the new year, so I was like, there's going to be a lot of new things when this episode comes out. But, yeah, it's a couple of months away. Just like two and a half months away. But I'm so excited for the new year. I'm already excited for it. But yes, I like the idea of the poll, but I don't think there's really much we could do about it unless we were pretending we were in the future, like I did when we started the episode and it felt really unnatural and weird.
Melanie Avalon:
That's so funny.
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah. What's new with you?
Melanie Avalon:
I did get asked to be a speaker at a biohacking summit in Dubai.
Vanessa Spina:
That's super exciting.
Melanie Avalon:
My travel skills, I don't think they're up there.
Vanessa Spina:
Know it's hard sometimes. I love speaking, and I've been taking a break from it for a couple of years. I was asked to speak at a biohacking conference. I think it's in Norway or Finland or Sweden. Sorry.
Melanie Avalon:
I know which one you're talking about. That one. Is it the winter one? Not winter, but I just think of winter because it's up there.
Vanessa Spina:
They're moving it to April now. And I said no before because I have Luca and I feel like I'm in this season right now where I'm just not in that mode. I feel like you have to be in that mode where you have your presentation ready and you're doing it all the time and you're speaking on a regular basis. And when you get out of it, like I've been for the past couple of years, like, having a baby and now a second baby, it's like, I know I need to get back into it, but it's hard to get back into it because I'm like, I don't want to go anywhere. I just want to stay in our little cozy bubble. But, yeah, I think those kind of events are so much fun. And if you do go and present, I think you'd have an amazing time.
Melanie Avalon:
Thank you. I'm not going to. Two thoughts about that. I don't have a desire to be a speaker at events. I would much rather attend them and cap out with that.
Vanessa Spina:
You don't enjoy speaking? I love speaking.
Melanie Avalon:
Well, I do love. Okay, wait, let me backtrack. I love being on stage. I think I would like speaking. I think that the issue is that I also want to really enjoy the event and so energetically. It just seems like a lot if I was also a speaker.
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, it is, for sure.
Melanie Avalon:
Like you just said.
Vanessa Spina:
But that's what I mean. Sometimes you get in, like, a groove in a zone, and you're just like, I have my talk down and I loved it. The one that you asked me about was my favorite talk. The one that I had on autophagy is my favorite. Anytime someone asks me to speak, I'm like, can I talk about autophagy? Because it gets me so excited that I love geeking out about the macrophages and the whole cellular. I love talking about it. I love presenting about it. I think if you have a topic, I've had other talks, though, where I didn't feel that way about them and I didn't look forward to speaking as much. And I would also get more nervous before presenting, especially when I was talking about myself and my health journey and experience. I really don't like doing that on stage. But then when I started to find topics where I'm like, this lights me up. That's when I started. I think it really comes down to the material that you're presenting, and if you feel fired up about it and you feel like the audience is going to have some mind blowing moments and huge takeaways and they're going to feel like that was really valuable, then I think that makes a big difference in how you feel about it.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, no, that's a really good point. I think if it was like an event and I could just go and speak and, yeah, I really actually think it's just the other factors of I would love it, but I would be so drained and then it would be hard for me to enjoy. Especially if it's like a multi day conference.
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I mean, you know yourself best, so you got to reserve your energy for what you want it for.
Melanie Avalon:
So many things. I guess in the meantime, there's all the virtual summits. Actually, I will have just done. Are you doing that fasting summit? The Dr. Jockers?
Vanessa Spina:
No, I haven't heard of it, actually. I don't think I have a reputation as like an intermittent fasting expert. That's definitely more you.
Melanie Avalon:
That makes sense. Hopefully people are on my email list. I will have just done a fasting one in December. That should be pretty fun. I think they have some pretty good people lined up. melanieavalon.com/emaillist do you have an email list link? I do. Oh, wait, but we talked about this. You don't really send emails.
Vanessa Spina:
I'm starting to. I'm starting to again, actually. I've been reviving it and I'm really enjoying it. I'm starting to send out email recaps of my best content and post about different studies that week. And I'm really enjoying that. But I've only done one so far, so I got to maybe monthly because I was like, I need to do this weekly. And that was just like too much right now, but maybe monthly I can do it. But I do have a sign up on my website when you go there, there's like a pop up. I should get a link though for mine.
Melanie Avalon:
It's pretty automated. So like, I do the Friday email announcement every Friday for the show. And then occasionally if there's something I really want to promote, I'll send it out. And then the crowd favorite is the gift guides, like the holiday gift guides because I put all of the Black Friday deals all in an email. And then for Christmas, like all the deals and my recommended gifts, people find that really, people wait for that. Please, I actually have on my calendar because I got to create that email. It's happening. It's going to be happening when I'm traveling to London, which is going to be a lot. But that's okay. I had one other thought about that. Well, if you do start creating more emails, you could always use chat GTP.
Vanessa Spina:
Yes, we were texting about that. I think I probably should. What are you getting it to write for you right now?
Melanie Avalon:
It's so helpful. Okay. So right now, and I want to update listeners on things I'm creating and all that stuff because there are so many things, but there's so many things right now and I'm not sure which one's going to manifest first. That just giving it a pause. Like right now I'm working on my food sense guide app, switching it to subscriptions. So it should already be subscriptions by the time this comes out. So creating a free trial so people can try it for free, which is great. And then it will be a subscription model, and then I want to update it with some features. But when we're working on it, I needed a terms of service. I needed a privacy policy. So I went to chat GTP. I was like, write a terms of service for Melanie Avalon's FoodSense guide app. And it was like, bam. It just spit it out. And it was like almost perfect. And then I was like, well, I wanted to say I wanted it to have more information about not serving as medical advice. So I was like, can you add a clause about not working as medical advice? And it added like the perfect clause with a privacy policy. I was like, write a privacy policy for Melanie Avalon's Bootsense guide app and it would just spit it out.
Vanessa Spina:
That's great. That's really helpful.
Melanie Avalon:
So I like it for things like that where it's not like creating content that's pretending to be me. It's like I literally just need a terms of service. It doesn't really matter who wrote it. I do get worried about authenticity and things like that. Yeah. The more I'm using it, I'm like, oh, this is very helpful.
Vanessa Spina:
That's really good.
Melanie Avalon:
Yes. So anything you need to write stuff like that for with your products, maybe it can help. Yeah.
Vanessa Spina:
At least even just start it so that you can then go through it after and tweak it or whatever.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah, it'll be really exciting when it can be more updated to more real time because it'll give you the latest that its database goes up to. So it's a bit dated still, but. Well, anything else or shall we jump into things?
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I would love to jump in to the questions. Our fabulous questions.
Melanie Avalon:
Okie dokie. All right, so our first question comes from Shelly and this is from Facebook and she wants to know, does eating a lot of protein help with sleep?
Vanessa Spina:
I love this question and it's really interesting because I was saying in our last episode that I was thinking about the bio individuality because there is really interesting research, I think actually on both sides, like some affirmative, some negative, but a lot of the research that I have looked at in the past has been how Presleep protein ingestion helps with muscle protein synthesis. So I really like this for people who are really looking to build muscle. Like if you are someone who's either a professional bodybuilder amateur, or you just really want to build muscle, it's an amazing way to actually help you build muscle. And especially for people who really need it, like who are sick or elderly, it's an amazing way to help. There's a really interesting 2019 study that talks about how eating protein right before sleeping, it actually is really effectively digested and absorbed during overnight sleep, and it increases the rates of muscle protein synthesis. So it doesn't appear to reduce appetite when people have breakfast the following day, and it does not appear to change resting energy expenditure or metabolic rate. But it's sort of looked at as sort of a protein supplementation that has a really beneficial effect on increasing muscle mass and strength. So people like the research has shown that it's very beneficial for helping to preserve muscle mass in the elderly, especially when combined with any physical activity or muscle contraction. And eating protein before sleep is also an effective interventional study to increase those rates of muscle protein synthesis during sleep to support skeletal muscle adaptive response to doing resistance training. So I've always really liked it for people who do resistance training, and I think it could be really beneficial, especially for certain populations who need that support with building muscle mass. It can attenuate muscle mass loss in hospitalized older adults as well. So certain, especially clinically compromised older populations who are combining it with exercise, they can really improve their muscle mass with that overnight muscle protein balance. Because you go in this catabolic state when you go to sleep and you have higher rates of muscle protein breakdown, which is why it can be really effective to eat protein, prioritize protein at your first meal today. So you come out of that muscle protein breakdown phase. But there are certain populations that can really benefit from that. So I know the question was more about quality of sleep, and I looked at some resources on this. In particular, there was an interesting study which talked about the connection with the amino acids. So it was looking at how basically protein provides tryptophan, and tryptophan can be converted into serotonin, which in turn can be converted into melatonin. And melatonin is that sleep hormone that regulates our body's sleep and wake cycles. What's really interesting about melatonin is so much research coming out about it right now where people kind of thought that we need melatonin to sleep and have good sleep quality. But it seems like that was one of those correlation, not causation situations where actually the reason that melatonin is associated with sleep is because if you get good sleep, then you have this melatonin rise and it's a mitochondrial antioxidant, because there's so much repair, like your mitochondria is being repaired while you sleep. So you want to have a lot of melatonin. It's not necessarily melatonin that's like making you sleepy, although it can have that effect. It's more so that it rises when you're sleeping because that's when you go into repair, which is really interesting. But the recommendations on eating protein before you sleep is to choose something smaller, like don't have a huge amount of protein before sleep. For most people, if you just have a huge protein meal and then get into bed, it might not be the most comfortable thing. And even just saying that makes me physically uncomfortable because as you and I have talked about a lot, I like to go to bed with at least 3 hours or so, since I've eaten, 4 hours is like ideal. I really don't like the sensation of getting into bed feeling full. So I also think there is some bow individuality, but the research clearly shows it's great for helping support muscle protein synthesis. It can be great in helping provide the amino acids that you need, although there's also other things needed, especially like morning light. Getting uva light can help with those amino acids that are actually, it's initiated through the light being detected by melanopsin receptor in your brain. And then there's these aromatic amino acids, sort of like behind your eye, there's this cascade. So you're getting that morning light and not having exposure to blue light a lot at night can really help make sure that you have a good amount of melatonin. But protein during the day or before sleep, I think it can help. But there's also that bio individuality, like, how do you feel when you get in bed? I know, Melanie, you've talked about how you like to go to bed feeling full, whereas for me, that's the worst possible thing. I just don't feel comfortable like that. So I think you also have to see how does it affect your sleep and sort of try it out and tinker with that.
Melanie Avalon:
Oh, my goodness. I love that so much. Okay. So many things. First of all, I'm really glad that you talked about that in the beginning about the muscle protein synthesis, because I had not looked that up at all. So that was really good to hear. I'm trying to find, because I got so excited. Do you have these moments when you are reading studies and they talk about something that you were wondering or you specifically wanted to be talked about, and then you find a paragraph talking about it and it's like, yeah, yes.
Vanessa Spina:
Tryptophan, serotonin, melatonin. Yes.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. No. It's, like, so exciting. So I actually, in one of the studies, because I was looking over reviews of effects of diet on sleep, and one of them had this random section where it was talking about. I kind of want to tell the history about this because I thought it was so fascinating. They didn't say this specifically, so I don't want to make this assumption, but it was talking in the study about how the first. Well, it was talking about how the first study on milk and sleep, because we often think about. I feel like there's this idea that you drink milk to go to sleep. At least that's what I was told growing up, that milk was like a sleep inducing thing.
Vanessa Spina:
Maria Emerick always talks about this bedtime snack with milk. Yeah.
Melanie Avalon:
I just know, like, it's. I don't know. My mom always told me that milk and my grandmother, that milk was like a thing. So the first study to examine this, oh, it wasn't even just milk. It was the first studies to examine the sleep inducing effects of a specific food ever was in the 1970s. And it was testing horlicks, which was a malted milk drink. So they weren't testing just milk, they were testing milk with this horlicks powder and compared to a control. So that Horlicks powder actually contained wheat malt, barley sugar, milk, and 14 vitamins and minerals. And what I thought was interesting about that was, I just wonder if from there is where we got this idea that milk supports sleep, when really it was this milk drink with other stuff in it. But what's interesting, and this is what relates to what Vanessa was saying, they did a lot of studies surrounding that. And one of the studies, they looked at people who usually ate within an hour of bedtime called the eaters, and those who did not normally eat before bedtime called the non eaters. And they found that the non eaters slept best after consuming what was basically nothing like. It was an inner capsule compared to the eaters. They slept best when they actually had this horlicks drink. And so the authors concluded that it was probably an individual's dietary habits that primarily influenced their response to food. And they talk about this as well, that the issues that often come with a high nocturnal food intake and includes protein affecting sleep quality is probably their postprandial discomfort from digestive activity. In other words, what Vanessa just said, like, know, feeling overly full or not digesting it well, that can negatively influence sleep if that's not what you are used to, if that's not what you do. And I was just so excited because when I was reading all these other studies, they would say that a lot. They would say that a late night meal wasn't conducive to sleep because of the GI distress or the postprandial distress. But then this one little clause was talking about how it really probably comes down to if you do that normally or not. I was so excited. So, basically, if you're used to eating before bed, and that's what helps you sleep well, you probably will sleep well after eating, compared to if you're somebody like Vanessa who does not enjoy that visceral experience, then you probably will not benefit from a large meal before bed. So, to comment on the other things, I went down the rabbit hole with what Vanessa was talking about with the protein and the tryptophan. So, yes, I went down the rabbit hole because basically, the studies are a little bit mixed with protein meals before bed. A lot of it does have to do with what I just said about the individuality of whether or not literally digesting something is what you're used to and if that's conducive to sleep or not. So that's factor one. But then a huge factor is the role of tryptophan. And so it's funny because people will often say that turkey makes you sleepy because it's high in tryptophan. So they'll say that and then you'll read, no, that's actually not the case. It's really just because you're in the post food coma from that huge Thanksgiving meal. And it's not really the tryptophan. I think it's actually pretty complicated, and here's why. So, yes, like Vanessa was saying, tryptophan does help support sleep by converting from tryptophan to serotonin to melatonin, which, to clarify about the melatonin, I, as well, have become really interested in the role of melatonin and mitochondrial health and how even taking supplemental melatonin, not for sleep per se, but for the mitochondrial benefits, is fascinating. I do want to clarify, though, it does induce sleep, right? It just doesn't keep you asleep, but it does instigate the falling asleep state. Or are you saying that they don't even think that it creates that effect?
Vanessa Spina:
I don't know exactly. I just know that a lot of the latest research is showing now that the fact that melatonin rises when we sleep is because it's doing all this mitochondrial repair, whereas we've always thought of it as we need melatonin to rise in order to go to sleep, which.
Melanie Avalon:
I think we do because it does induce that state. But then you're saying it's rise after because we know it doesn't keep you asleep. So if it's rising while you're sleeping, presumably that's not to make you fall asleep like you're already asleep, and it's presumably not keeping you asleep either, because that's not its purpose. So I'm guessing this is just me extrapolating. I'm guessing it does help induce falling asleep, but then the endogenous upregulation of melatonin, is that role in the mitochondria, I'm guessing.
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, that makes sense.
Melanie Avalon:
Do you take melatonin ever?
Vanessa Spina:
No. I do know, though, that it's very confusing on the amount. So I've heard some people say that the physiological amount of melatonin that we need is actually not in grams. It's much smaller than that. I don't know if it's like micrograms that we're supposed to be taking. So when people take melatonin for sleep, it tends to make them really groggy because most people are overdosing on it. And I did a melatonin experiment, and I found that it helped me go to sleep two nights in a row. It helped my sleep onset, but then by the third day, it made me extremely groggy. And that's always the experience I had with it in the past. And then it was. I think it was Matt from bioptimizers who told me that it's because most people are taking way too much. So they came up with this sleep spray so that you can sort of dose, like, you can micro dose the melatonin in these tiny amounts, and that's actually what we need. Then I remember hearing you and Cynthia talk about how you were taking these mega doses of it because it is this mitochondrial antioxidant. So I was like, I don't understand. It always makes me groggy, so I just don't like to mess with it, really.
Melanie Avalon:
No, I mean, everything you said, I'm just like, yes. I feel like that's so much of the confusion and experience surrounding melatonin. And I know I told this story before, and I might have even told it to you about that time that I literally took a whole bottle by accident. Did I tell you that?
Vanessa Spina:
Yes, you did. And that was one of the funniest stories. Because you thought it was your digestive enzymes.
Melanie Avalon:
I thought it was my digestive enzymes, yeah, because they're, like, the same bottle, and they're the same capsule size. It's the same everything. And then the next day, I pulled out my digestive enzymes, and. No, I pulled out my melatonin, and it was, like, gone. I was like, oh, that's what happened. Last night.
Vanessa Spina:
You said you had, like, an amazing sleep, right?
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. And the funny thing is, I didn't perceive being super groggy or anything. And I really do wonder if I had known I had taken that, if I would have felt way more groggy, I imagine I would have.
Vanessa Spina:
Did you ever end up feeling groggy.
Melanie Avalon:
From that experience or in general, from just that experience? From that? No, I don't have any memory. Yeah, I didn't have any memory. Experience being groggy. And then the next night, when I realized I had taken a whole bottle, I was like, oh, okay. That explains, I don't know. But what's interesting, I have had the experience, you said, of sometimes feeling groggy and sometimes not. And I have a theory. I have a theory about this. I don't know if this is accurate. I wonder because of eating. And when I take it, do those capsules ever and again, this is super not real science, but do those capsules ever end up digesting at later points some nights than others, based on the context that they're in? And then would that affect the timeline of the release of it? That's why I really like what you just said about a spray, like something where you could instantly get it into you and be a smaller dose. That sounds pretty. I should make one of those.
Vanessa Spina:
It makes so much sense, right, that you could just micro dose it. And it scares me when I think of people taking these massive doses when with supplements, sometimes you do more harm than good. I've talked to people who specialize in studying a microbiota and the microbiome and they're like, I always ask them the same question and I'm like, do you think people are kind of like overdoing it with their probiotics? And it's just so funny because they're all like, yeah, because we know probiotics are good for you. And then people started selling them in stores and then the mentality is always like, well, I should get the billion or the trillion, whatever the probiotic with the most lactobilis or the most this or that. And it's like, well, we don't really know is that optimal or not, but we just always think more is better and the biggest dose is going to generate the best response. When there are situations where even that study with the athletes where they took vitamin C and it actually made their performance worse because they needed to generate the antioxidants themselves in order to get better at their performance. And so it's like there's just so much that we think that we know what we're doing and we don't. So there's often situations, I'm like, I think it's better to just not because you could end up making it worse, but I think it's much safer with a microdose, probably.
Melanie Avalon:
No, I love that you said that about the probiotics. And it's interesting. I was actually listening last night. Have you listened to Peter Tia's most recent episode where he's.
Vanessa Spina:
I was going to ask you about it. I haven't yet, but when I saw the Q a come out, I was like, I bet Melanie's going to listen to this one because I was like, I really want to listen to it.
Melanie Avalon:
I'm very much enjoying it. Surprise.
Vanessa Spina:
Any big insights?
Melanie Avalon:
I'm not done with it yet. It's Peter answering q a about longevity related topics and his most current thoughts. And one of the questions they asked was his current supplement routine. And he does make it very clear that this is like, his current supplement routine right now and that it is different in the past and will be different in the future. And that's the reason that he doesn't like talking about it. And same with me, when he was saying it, I was, yep. Like, I don't like talking about my supplement routine because it does change. And I feel like if you say something, it gets crystallized. It's like, oh, this is what Melanie does. I feel like sometimes I'll see in Facebook or sometimes I'll see comments and there'll be like a comment, and then somebody will comment be like, well, melanie says blah, blah. And I'm like, whoa, it's not even always accurate. So, yeah, he talks about his supplement routine and he talked about a probiotic. Now that he sold me, now I'm like, I want to try that. He said he picked it based on he thought it had the most impressive clinical research behind it for its effects on blood sugar control and reducing HBA one C and diabetics, which I found really interesting. And I wanted to see which strains were in it. Yeah. So I'll have to look up what it was. I will say with the probiotics, I find a lot of benefit from just having, I think going the fermented food route can be helpful for a lot of people, and it doesn't even take that much, but I'll just have, like, a little bit of sauerkraut every night. And that really, really helps me.
Vanessa Spina:
That's what I do. I'm like, just eat the fermented foods. It's so much better than taking a pill.
Melanie Avalon:
I love that. I love bioptimizers. P three o m. I've been talking about that for years. I still love it. What I love about it is that it's not a histamine. It's like one strain. I like the ability of having one strain and not having the super histamine producing strains. And it's specifically a protein digesting proteolytic probiotic.
Vanessa Spina:
It's a lot of peas. Yes, I like it too. It's the main one that I have, but I just haven't been taking it as much because I prefer to get it just from the food, fermented foods. Sauerkraut is really big in check. So it's a big part of the lifestyle and sort of cultural food culture.
Melanie Avalon:
Well, my background is german, so sauerkraut is, like, in my veins. Sauerkraut. How do we get on this topic? Okay, because melatonin and supplements.
Vanessa Spina:
So that's why.
Melanie Avalon:
Yes. And to answer your question, I'm still listening to the episode. But the takeaway so far is he does not think anytime in the near future we will be able to massively extend lifespan. He thinks that's all a lot of talk and that there's not a lot of actual things happening and that it's going to take a major discovery and it probably won't happen. He doesn't think, like, in his lifetime or in his lifetime to the point where it could have an extension of his lifespan.
Vanessa Spina:
They're saying now that our children are the first generation to be born, that is going to have a shorter life expectancy than ours in history. So we're not really cruising towards extending lifespan right now.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. The health span issue is the healthspan and lifespan. It's crazy because on the one hand, it's like two paths. We have this path of degenerative disease and health issues related to our diet and our environment and our lifestyle, which is going one direction, which is the direction you just mentioned, reducing lifespan. Then we have these technological developments to discover modalities to extend lifespan, potentially by combating these, quote, hard limits, these proverbial hard limits related to aging and mortality. So it's like two completely divergent things happening. The thing that haunts me is when he talks about cardiovascular disease risk and being on statins, because he really thinks that if you really want to obliterate your heart disease risk, you need to be on pharmaceuticals.
Vanessa Spina:
Don't agree. He's.
Melanie Avalon:
I don't know. He's getting to me. I'm like, I don't know. So any case, back to the protein and sleep and all the things and the tryptophan. So I was talking about the milk, and this is funny or interesting, Vanessa, what are the odds? Did you know they have done studies. Did you know, did you know that the time that you milk a cow affects the amount of melatonin in the milk?
Vanessa Spina:
That's crazy.
Melanie Avalon:
Yeah. They have done studies on, quote, nighttime milk. So if you milk the cows at night, there's more melatonin in the milk.
Vanessa Spina:
I have seen that with human breast milk. So if you pump your breast milk, you're supposed to only give your baby the breast milk that you pump during the day because it's going to have more cortisol and the breast milk that you pump at night. Or you should pump at night and give them that breast milk at night because it'll have more melatonin.
Melanie Avalon:
Isn't that crazy? Yeah.
Vanessa Spina:
And people have babies, like, who are up all night because they're giving them milk they pumped in the morning, which is, like, higher in cortisol.
Melanie Avalon:
Wow, that's so fascinating. I was reading this last night, and I don't drink milk, but I was like, I want to make a nighttime milk product. I want to find the cows and milk them at night. Like, oh, my gosh. Like the promo. I could dress up like a, you know, like the milk. The milk girls. A milkmaid. Milkmaid.
Vanessa Spina:
German milkmaid. They have those costumes. They're really cute.
Melanie Avalon:
I really want to have a milkmaid brand now. Like nighttime milkmaid. Nighttime milkmaid. Avalon X.
Vanessa Spina:
That's really cute.
Melanie Avalon:
So the studies on it, though. So they did one study where they looked at milking cows at nighttime as opposed to daytime. They did a long term crossover study in 70 elderly patients with dementia to look at the effects. They actually found no effect of the nighttime milk over eight weeks on sleep quality. But they did find that when they drank the nighttime milk that they had greater morning and evening physical activity, which was seen as beneficial, which is interesting. Another study showed that melatonin enriched milk improved sleep efficiency and reduced the number of awakenings in middle aged adults with insomnia. And nighttime milk, which has, like I said, has melatonin and tryptophan, which I'm going to circle back to, shortens the onset and prolongs the duration of sleep. So basically, they fall asleep faster and they sleep longer in mice, and it has a sedating effect. I'm actually pretty shocked that a major brand has not done this yet with their milk. This could be a thing. That's why I want to do it. Even though I don't drink milk. I might do this. Friends, I'm not kidding. Maybe if I met, like, in, like five years or six years. In, like a decade. If I'm just like an entrepreneur, like, doing all the things.
Vanessa Spina:
There's so many, it's like, it's hard to choose sometimes what you put your energy into. Yes.
Melanie Avalon:
And this is something where just to make a quick comment, for example, like Blake Lively, who I really love, Blake Lively, she's been getting some backlash because she doesn't drink alcohol, but she released a, in her beverage line, she released an alcoholic drink, and she got backlash because she doesn't drink. I'm just thinking about it. This would be the situation with me and the milk. I would totally do this, even though I don't drink milk. Like, I think you can still create something if you believe in it for whatever reasons, for certain people, even if it's not what you use, of course.
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah.
Melanie Avalon:
So just tangents there. Back to the tryptophan. So tryptophan is an amino acid, like I said, and we said, that leads to serotonin and the melatonin. Here's the thing, though, it's complicated. You can't just eat a lot of protein high in tryptophan and be like, yay, all the tryptophan I'm going to fall asleep does not work that way. Why? Here's why a few different reasons. One, tryptophan only has this magical ability to do everything we just said if it crosses the blood brain barrier. In order to cross the blood brain barrier, it competes with other amino acids, specifically large chain neutral amino acids. So those are called lcnaas. So if you have a high protein food, it's often high in both tryptophan and these large chain neutral amino acids, meaning the tryptophan can't get into the brain because it gets outcompeted. However, there are a few things that address this. Certain proteins have a higher tryptophan to LCNA ratio. So basically, there's more tryptophan than those other amino acids. So the tryptophan kind of wins and gets into your brain. And so that's the case with a lot of plant based proteins as well as egg protein. It has one of the highest tryptophan to LNAA profiles. Interestingly, one of the lowest profiles is in dairy. And then when it comes to those plant sources, nuts and seeds have the highest tryptophan content compared to the lnaas. And fruits also have a really nice ratio, but they're so low in protein that it's not quite as applicable. There's another way around it, though. So if you have carbs, they release insulin. Insulin actually preferentially reduces those large chain neutral amino acids in the bloodstream, but does not affect tryptophan. So if you have protein with carbs, you reduce those competing amino acids, and then the tryptophan can go into the brain. So that's why having protein with carbs can actually be a way to help support your sleep. There's actually been a ton of studies on this, and that's generally the vibe, but as per usual, they'll find different things in different populations. And one of the studies was talking about this and they said it probably has to do with the individuality, it has to do with how these are all set up different. There are just so many factors, but probably on just a purely mechanical basis. Proteins with a higher tryptophan to large neutral amino acid ratio is helpful. And then pairing it with carbs. And then just some studies. For example, in general, one study found that participants experienced, they woke up less during the night when they had a high protein meal. Two studies looked at the effect of, oh, I thought this was interesting. It looked at calorie restricted, energy restricted diets, but with protein. And they are like, basically with focusing on protein, they found that their sleep with 20% protein intake had the best improvement in their sleep, compared to less 10% or more, which was 30%. Interestingly, in that one, they found that the source of protein did not affect it. So just talk about how things were conflicting. So they were looking at beef and pork versus soy and legumes, and they found that they didn't find a difference there. Another study looked at low protein intake, which was less than 16% of energy, and they found that it associated with poor quality of sleep, and it was slightly associated with difficulty in falling asleep compared to high protein intake, which they call greater than 19%. That actually had issues with staying asleep. So it seems like, again, kind of like the study I just mentioned, where 20% was a sweet spot and compared to ten or 30% with this one. Too low head issues, too high had issues. The best seemed to be, I mean, presumably the best would be somewhere in the middle. And then to comment again on the carb aspect. So, in general, that carb pairing with protein might be beneficial, but the type of carbs probably matter. So they do not find that carbs from sugar, so more refined carbs seem to have a negative effect on sleep. Fiber seems to have a beneficial effect. And it's probably the whole foods forms of carbs that are more helpful. So not like sugar, sugar. This is not saying to eat a lot of sugar, to fall asleep. That's probably not the way to go. And then I got really excited, because in one of these studies, they were talking about fasting and sleep, and they were talking about how there actually was not a lot of studies on diet and fasting and sleep, which I thought was pretty interesting. So one study looked at the basic takeaway from the few studies that it looked at was that fasting did not have a super measurable effect on sleep. Either way, I would actually like to go down the rabbit hole and see if there are more studies, but that wasn't my focus of research when I was looking this up. And then just because it was talking about it, I will point this out there. There have been some studies on certain foods supporting sleep. And specifically one thing I had experimented with, which was, like, tart cherries. Have you ever taken or used tart cherry juice, Vanessa? Or had tart cherries?
Vanessa Spina:
I've definitely heard about it. And there's another one, too, that's. It's something with bitter lemon or something, but I haven't tried it.
Melanie Avalon:
There was a period of time where I really had pretty bad insomnia, and I was trying all the different things, and I would do the tart cherry juice and I mean, yeah, it would really help me sleep, and it's really high in melatonin. There are actually a lot of studies. There was a whole section in one of the papers on tart cherries and then just normal cherries. But the data is pretty supportive of those cherries having a sleep promoting effect, as well as kiwis, which made me happy because I love kiwi. Reason I love Kiwis, kiwis and pineapple is they both have enzymes that help digest protein, which I definitely went through kiwi phases. Are you a kiwi person or a pineapple person?
Vanessa Spina:
I don't think I've eaten those in, like, over a decade.
Melanie Avalon:
Oh, my goodness. I had my pineapple phase.
Vanessa Spina:
Really had any fruit other than berries.
Melanie Avalon:
Oh, right. I forget who I'm talking to.
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, I'm like pineapple. To me, that's just like pure sugar. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just how it affects me is not good. Like when we were talking about insatiability for me, that's what high amounts of carbs do for me. Although I still want to test it with high protein. I haven't really done that before. I still want to do that. But for me, if I have a lot of sugar, especially in fruit, I just makes me ravenous. I just want to eat all the time. So that's one of the reasons I haven't had it in so many years.
Melanie Avalon:
Two comments on that one. Hands down, the least inflamed I ever felt. And listeners know this if they've been with me for these past six years. I went through a period of time where I was eating so much pineapple, and the amount of proteolytic enzymes I was getting from that pineapple. I think it was crazy what it was doing beneficially. And if you think about it, if you ever get surgery, they'll tell you. I mean, this has happened to me multiple times now. They suggest having pineapple, like, before and after for the recovery process. And I just think that's really telling, that you could do it acutely for surgery. So think about if you're having it as a staple of your diet, which I did for so long. And the reason, though, the reason I haven't brought it back is I feel like, I don't know if it's age or whatever, but I feel like I can't tolerate as much now that high sugar content anymore, which makes me sad. I have goals of becoming a pineapple girl again, but I've just been doing blueberries. Oh, which, side note, I got so excited last night, I was reading an article. This made my day. It was about frozen blueberries being better for the antioxidant potential than fresh blueberries. And I eat, like, pounds of frozen blueberries every night. It's because the ice crystals that form actually break down. Like, the antioxidants are found largely in the skin, and something about the ice crystal structure affects how makes them more accessible to your body.
Vanessa Spina:
That's interesting. One of my friends, she's Sylvia Tabor. She's known as, like, the biohacking chick, she did this thing with pineapple. I just wanted to mention it. I know we're not talking about blueberries now, but she did this experiment with crazy amounts of MCT oil powder and pineapple, and we did a whole podcast about it because she lost, like, 20 pounds in a month or something doing this, and everyone wanted to know what she was doing. And it was like she was doing this MCT oil powder, and she was taking quite a bit of it throughout the day. And then there were quite a few people who came out who were in the low carb space, were like, there's no way that that's real. And it became really controversial. And then we did this live, and I had to take it down because it was like, getting so much.
Melanie Avalon:
You took it down?
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, it was, like, too much. I was getting hundreds of messages a day from people who were demanding to know what she took, exactly how many times, how many grams, which product, and I was like, I can't do this. It was just so insane. We still had the podcast episode, but it created this frenzy of interest in people who follow her and me. And it was like, I have to stop. And then I just shut it down completely. Like, I purged all the content about it because it was so crazy how much it affected people.
Melanie Avalon:
That's so funny. I remember that time. That's when actually, when we became. I mean, I guess we're kind of like friends. We started talking on Instagram during that whole time. She actually reached out to me, I think originally, because she knew I had been talking about MCT oil and adding that to my diet. So we had a whole. What you were just talking about? So we had a whole conversation. We were talking a lot about it back then, one on one. I always found her so fascinating because I just looked at her instagram. Now she shows her face, but she would never show her face on her instagram.
Vanessa Spina:
Yeah, it was always her abs.
Melanie Avalon:
It was always her body. And I was like, what does her face look like? But now her profile is her face. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And I actually had Sylvia, I had talked with her as well about all of that stuff with the MCTs, especially when. Because I had, and I've talked a lot on this show about using MCTs with diet and losing weight, but I never combined it with high carb. I was doing low carb with MCT oil. I know she does the powder. It's a whole thing. Yeah. So, yes, I think we tackled it pretty much. Did we answer the question about protein and sleep?
Vanessa Spina:
I think this is such an important topic, and I love that we both explored different areas of research on it, and I think we covered it pretty in depth.
Melanie Avalon:
Awesome. Me too. Well, this has been absolutely wonderful. A few things for listeners before we go. If you would like to submit your own questions for the show, you can directly email questions@ifpodcast.com or you can go to ifpodcast.com and you can submit questions there. These show notes will be at ifpodcast.com/episode351 and you can follow us on Instagram. We are if podcast. I am @melanieavalon. Vanessa is @ketogenicgirl. I think that is all the things. Anything from you, Vanessa, before we go.
Vanessa Spina:
I love this topic. I'm so grateful, as always, for listener questions, feedback, and support, and can't wait for the next episode with you and excited for the start of 2024.
Melanie Avalon:
I know. Happy 2024 to you.
Melanie Avalon:
I will see you next week.
Vanessa Spina:
Sounds great.
Melanie Avalon:
Bye bye.
Melanie Avalon:
Thank you so much for listening to the Intimation Fasting Podcast. Please remember, everything we discussed on this show does not constitute medical advice and no patient-doctor relationship is formed. If you enjoyed the show, please consider writing a review on iTunes. We couldn't do this without our amazing team. Administration by Sharon Merriman, editing by Podcast Doctors, show notes and artwork by Brianna Joyner, and original theme composed by Leland Cox and recomposed by Steve Saunders.
STUFF WE LIKE
Check out the Stuff We Like page for links to any of the books/supplements/products etc. mentioned on the podcast that we like!
LINKS
BUY:
Melanie's What When Wine Diet: Lose Weight And Feel Great With Paleo-Style Meals, Intermittent Fasting, And Wine
Vanessa's Keto Essentials: 150 Ketogenic Recipes to Revitalize, Heal, and Shed Weight
The Tone Device Breath Ketone Analyzer
The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast
More on Melanie: MelanieAvalon.com
More on Vanessa: ketogenicgirl.com
Theme Music Composed By Leland Cox: LelandCox.com
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