The Dr. Gabrielle Lyon Show

Protein has become a numbers game, and the numbers leave out the essential amino acids your muscle, brain and metabolism depend on. Protein is how you get them, and its quality may change how well you age. In this episode, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon brings together some of her favorite moments with Dr. Don Layman, Dr. Heather Leidy and Dr. Jess Gwin to break down the essential amino acid requirement, cut...

Eating before bed: harmful or helpful? Dr. Mike Ormsbee breaks down protein before bed, casein vs. whey, fat metabolism, sleep, and resistance training for postmenopausal women. Late-night eating comes with many rules of thumb, and most people follow them without knowing what the research shows. Dr. Mike Ormsbee, a researcher at Florida State University, has spent years measuring how protein befor...

Childhood and adolescence provide a one-time biological opportunity: our kids' bodies are primed to grow, build tissue, and develop cognitive capacity. But to do that, they need the right raw materials. In this video, we break down why restricting nutrient-dense foods in growing children puts their development at risk. We explore the critical role of highly bioavailable nutrients like heme iron an...

What you choose to eat is the single most important decision you make every day—impacting your metabolic health, your family, the economy, and the future of our food supply. In this episode, world-renowned cardiologist and nutrition expert Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian breaks down the "Food is Medicine" movement, cuts through dietary confusion (fats vs. carbs, food label marketing, and ultra-processed i...

Protein is in everything right now: coffee, chips, cookies, bars. But despite the massive marketing hype, the world’s leading scientists are still debating fundamental questions about how much protein we actually need and how the body uses it. Fresh off the Protein Summit 3.0 at Texas A&M, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon breaks down what top researchers agreed on, why treating protein as a single number is...

In this episode, board-certified anesthesiologist, researcher, and former Real Housewives of Dallas star Dr. Tiffany Moon pulls back the curtain on modern medicine, surgical pain management, and the reality of navigating elite academia. From addressing widespread public fears around clinical fentanyl use to detailing why she was branded an "embarrassment" by academic peers for appearing on reality...

Can you tell someone's testosterone or estrogen levels just by looking at their face? Is "jawmaxxing" actually backed by science? In this video, we dive deep into the real science of hormones, physical attraction, and evolutionary biology. We debunk popular myths around high testosterone, facial masculinity, and ovulation preferences, revealing what the research actually shows about human mate sel...

When you have musculoskeletal pain, the natural instinct is to try and treat it directly. But the cause of that pain often starts somewhere else in the body. I learned that from this week's guest, Dr. JJ Thomas, who is my physical therapist and good friend. She was my patient first, and now we are each other's patients. She has practiced physical therapy for more than 25 years and has worked with...

Will I get too bulky?" No. "Is it too late?" Also no. Here's the context: during the menopause transition, women lose lean mass, gain fat, and their muscle becomes harder to build — the same workout and the same protein meal produce less than they did at 30. For years the only conversation has been hormone therapy, yes or no, as if that were the fix. In Part 2 of her menopause series, Dr. Gabriell...

Most patients are told one thing before surgery: stop all supplements. Duke surgeon Dr. Rebecca Knackstedt says that blanket advice can do harm, and that what you do in the days before surgery changes how you heal. Dr. Knackstedt is a plastic and reconstructive microsurgeon on faculty at Duke, an MD-PhD researcher and a certified functional medicine provider whose research focuses on surgical preh...

Menopause is changing your body, but the part nobody talks about isn't hot flashes. It's muscle. Women lose lean mass fastest in perimenopause, the loss probably starts closer to 35, and no pill, patch or injection fixes it. In this solocast, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon explains what estrogen, testosterone and FSH actually do to your metabolism, why a 50-year-old body can still build muscle, and the traini...

Your testosterone number matters at every age, but most men never learn what theirs should be. Mayo Clinic urologist Dr. Tobias Kohler explains why ~500 is the target, why 1,000 is already running hot, what 2,000+ does to the heart, and why a randomized trial found lifting without steroids beat steroids without lifting. Plus: the blood test that catches heart risk your cholesterol panel misses. Dr...

You say "steroids" and picture a baseball scandal, a jacked guy, a bad spray tan. But cortisol is a steroid. Estrogen is a steroid. The cream you put on poison ivy is a steroid. The word covering all of them is also covering testosterone therapy for women, and that collision is quietly costing women muscle and bone they don't have to lose. In this solo episode, prompted by a magazine interview on...

Most people assume becoming a parent is an emotional change, but a measurable part of it is hormonal, and it happens in fathers too. I sat down with Aldrich Chan, Psy. D., to talk about what changes in the brain, why the split we draw between mind and body does not hold up, and what decides whether stress reads as manageable or overwhelming when the hormones are identical either way. Want ad-free...

You might think bone density is something you build slowly over a lifetime, but nearly all of your peak bone mass is set before age 18, in a four-year window most parents never see coming. In this solo episode I break down what happens to a child's skeleton during that window, what GLP-1 medications do inside a body that's still growing, and the protocol I'd want every parent to follow. Muscle and...

You have probably been told that testosterone is a male hormone. Women produce more of it than estrogen, and for many of us it is the first hormone to go, sometimes reading zero five years before menopause while periods are still regular. Dr. Susan Hardwick-Smith and I get into what that costs you in muscle and bone, why there are thirty-one approved testosterone products for men and none for wome...

You probably ate something today with high protein printed across the front of it, and there is a good chance it did almost nothing for your skeletal muscle. There is no meaningful enforcement standard for what the front of a package is allowed to promise, and the research points to a per meal threshold most of these products do not come close to touching. Here is the number, the five myths that h...

A Navy captain with 24 years of service went to medical for exhaustion, weight gain, and low mood, and was told to see a therapist and eat less. When he asked for a testosterone test his physician asked whether he had erectile dysfunction, and refused to order it when he said no. His level came back at 160; the cutoff we use in this country is 300. I've treated this population for 15 years, and ro...

You might think creatine is a bodybuilder's steroid you have to cycle, load, and fear for your kidneys, but it's a compound your own body already makes from three amino acids, with one of the deepest safety records in all of nutrition science. The problem isn't the creatine; it's the noise around it. In this solo episode, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon discusses: Why the bump creatine causes in your creatinin...

Most of what we call "aging" may not be about time at all. It may be a nervous system stuck in stress, quietly draining your sleep, your recovery, and your long-term health. In this episode, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon sits down with Dr. Kristen Holmes to discuss: Why the hallmarks of aging- inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular decline may be symptoms of a dysregulated autonomic nervous system...

Blowing four times the legal limit on a breathalyzer usually means one thing, but in 2015, a judge dismissed a DWI because the driver's own gut was fermenting alcohol from an ordinary carb-heavy dinner. It's called auto-brewery syndrome, and the fuel it runs on is the same load your muscle is supposed to be clearing from your blood. In this solo episode, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon discusses: How gut yeast...

Most people chase happiness as a feeling and wait for certainty before making big decisions, and both instincts quietly backfire. Dr. Arthur Brooks joins Dr. Gabrielle Lyon to break down what happiness is and how to act on it. In this episode, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and Dr. Arthur Brooks discuss: The three "macronutrients" of happiness - enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, and why pursuing pleasure...

You might think the number dropping on the scale is the whole win, but on a GLP-1, a meaningful share of what you're losing may be muscle, not fat, and the fiber that's supposed to help can quietly make things worse. In this solo episode, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon discusses: Why 25–40% of the weight lost on GLP-1 medications can be lean mass, and how to protect your muscle with adequate protein (1.2–1.5...

You'd think fear is what stops you from doing hard things. At 25, with zero rowing experience, Taryn Smith crossed the Atlantic alone. 3,000 miles, 46 days, and I learned that the fear was never the obstacle. It was the signal she was finally in the right place. In this episode, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon and Taryn Smith discuss: Why fear is a "metric of success," not a stop sign, and how to train yoursel...

You've probably worried that the glyphosate on your bread is slowly harming you. The evidence points somewhere far less obvious and far more fixable. In this solo episode, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon discusses: Why the real concern isn't cancer risk from your toast, but glyphosate's effect on your gut, where it can act like a selective antibiotic, hitting beneficial bacteria while sparing the harmful ones...