These Are The Hidden Dangers Of Eating Too Much Protein

Protein is one of the key factors to shape up the muscles in your body. It also helps to shape it up. But too much can deal a big risk to your health. Check out the article we found at Articles Mercola.

It’s important to realize that there is an upper limit to how much protein your body can actually use. And, on the average, Americans consume anywhere from three to five times more protein than they need, along with far too many carbohydrates and insufficient amounts of healthy fats.

To understand why eating too much protein is a bad idea, consider the following:

When you consume more protein than your body needs, your body must remove more nitrogen waste products from your blood, which stresses your kidneys. Chronic dehydration can result, as was found in a study involving endurance athletes.

Excessive protein can have a stimulating effect on an important biochemical pathway called the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). This pathway has an important and significant role in many cancers. It’s also a significant regulator of the aging process.

Excessive protein also adversely impacts the GCN2 pathway, which like mTOR is involved in the aging process. As noted by health and nutrition blogger Dan Pardi, limiting protein beneficially inhibits this pro-aging pathway:

Pinning down the ideal amount of protein can be tricky business, with plenty of variables adding to the confusion. However, a good starting point is to calculate your need based on your lean body weight. I believe it would be quite rare for someone to need more than 0.5 gram of protein per pound of lean body weight, taking into account the fact that pregnant women, athletes and seniors may need about 25 percent more on top of that.

I strongly encourage you to do a careful analysis of precisely how much protein you are eating every day. The results may surprise you, as I’m sure many are consuming more than 100 grams per day, and very few people would need that much.

You would have to be a 6-foot-4 inch, 225 pound athlete with 10 percent body fat to need that much. While higher protein may aid weight loss, the drawbacks are manifold, and can easily outweigh this benefit. Shifting over to higher quality protein sources is also important, as factory farmed animal foods come with drawbacks that go beyond the issue of protein.