I was lucky to be offered a place to work at University College London by Richard Edwards when I returned in 1976 from St Louis Mo, where I had worked on muscle fuel metabolism with John Holloszy. It was fortuitous because Richard invited me to a meeting of the Muscular Dystrophy Group of Great Britain in Birmingham at which I (too long to relate the nature of the misunderstanding here) commandeered the room of Joe Millward, leading to a life long friendship but also to a link to a nexus of interests and expertise which have shaped my entire scientific life. Joe introduced me to David Halliday and to John Waterlow who (with Joe) had major interests in protein metabolism and my St Louis links (with Denny Bier and Dwight Mathews) allowed me to put together novel approaches to muscle protein metabolism, which remain today the bedrock of what we currently know about human muscle protein turnover. Richard was enthused by Josephs Barcroft's apothegm "every adaptation is an integration", and this enthusiasm he transferred to me. Richard, of course was very keen on physiology (a subject in which he won a prize at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School) but as a doctor he regarded even disease as a twisted manifestation in which the end phenotype had resulted from an integrative adaptation. I had three main projects with RHTE- the effects of exercise on protein metabolism, the effects of feeding on muscle protein synthesis and the effects of muscle disease (however widely defined) on the maintenance of muscle size, composition and function. In the years since we have defined the effects of activity and inactivity on muscle protein metabolism, shown that the main drivers of muscle growth are food and strenuous exercise, via increases in muscle protein synthesis, and underlying anabolic signalling effects; we also have shown that all chronic wasting , of whatever proximal cause - dystrophy, slow cancer, cardiovascular or endocrine disease, immobilization, COPD, and even ageing are the results of a failure of muscle protein synthesis not increases in muscle protein breakdown. These results derive partly from Richard's willingness to recognize the integrative response of the muscle as a tissue a toxic assault of whatever source. He would, I expect, have thoroughly approved of our latest attempts to ameliorate the dysfunctional changes in ageing people by identifying ways of improving muscle maintenance by resistance exercise training, adding leucine to food taken after exercise and supplementing food with fish oil- all ways of markedly stimulating muscle protein synthesis.