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you

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Hey everyone, it's Mikki here. You're listening to Mikkipedia. This week on the podcast, I speak to Dr. Stacy Sims. Stacy is, as you know, an internationally renowned exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist, and she is a passionate advocate for women in sport. Stacy has been instrumental in changing the narrative around female physiology in the training world, coining the now widely quoted phrase, women are not small men.

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And in this conversation, we really go deeper into where that messaging holds firm and where a more nuanced, individualised approach might be more appropriate. We discussed the tension between bold public messaging and personalised science, protein thresholds for muscle maintenance, and whether cycle tracking is really worth the hype and can we use it at that group level. Among other topics, because we talk about a lot,

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Stacey shares where her thinking has shifted in most recent years and where she sees the field expanding. It's a refreshingly honest and evidence-informed conversation with practical takeaways for women at every stage of life. And what I really loved about this is we got the opportunity to chat about the limitations, I suppose, in science and the individual in front of you and how sometimes that intersection

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isn't just this really well blended recommendation and you've got to make adjustments for the individual variations. And so I really felt like some of the, I suppose the misrepresentation of what Stacey says or the misinterpretation of it can leave people feeling a little bit confused, but I felt like we had a really great conversation around why that is and also, you know, what to do about it.

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Dr Stacey Sims is a leading expert in sex differences and exercise physiology and nutrition with a particular focus on optimizing performance and health outcomes for women. With over 70 peer review publications, she's worked with elite athletes, military personnel and recreational exercises alike. Stacey earned her PhD in environmental exercise physiology and sports nutrition from the University of Otago, which is where Stacey and I first met many, many, many years ago.

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and she has held research positions at Stanford University and the University of Waikato. She's the author of raw and mixed level to groundbreaking books that translate complex science into practical advice for women navigating training, performance and menopause. And of course she has courses relating to these online courses where people can dive deeper into how to apply that into their practical situation.

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Through her research, public speaking and her courses, Stacey continues to challenge outdated practices in sports science by advocating for a more inclusive, female-focused and evidence-based approach to physiology. And even if you've heard Stacey speak on a number of podcasts, because she's really been on quite a few huge platforms, I still think you're going to get something from our conversation together. All right, team, before I crack on into this,

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Please don't forget that the best way to support Micopedia is to hit the subscribe button on your favourite podcast listening platform. That increases the visibility of our podcast in amongst literally thousands of other podcasts out there. So more people get the opportunity to hear from people I have on the show like Dr. Stacey Sims. All right team, enjoy the conversation.

03:49
Stacey, thank you so much for taking time this afternoon. Hopefully you're just letting your lunch digest as we sit here and talk. Yeah. What was for lunch? It was the other half of my breakfast plus afternoon snack. I love it. Now you're going to have to be specific and then you'll start launching like hundreds and thousands of people will start like the protein coffee will start following on. Isn't it? Yeah.

04:17
So what was the second half of my breakfast was overnight chia oats with what else had I put in berries and walnuts and almonds. And then I topped that off with a apple and some toast and some cottage cheese. Oh, yes. Because I've under eaten the past three days. So if it's something that's fast and easy, putting it in my mouth at the moment.

04:45
Is it just your schedule right now? You just like balls to the wall? Yeah. And I took a little bit of extra time yesterday and we did 110 K mountain bike ride and I didn't eat enough right. So a bit low today. Oh, how fabulous. How was your ride? How was your knee on your ride, by the way? Knee was fine on the ride. Nice. It's just going up and down stairs. Not so great. And that's like almost the experience of just being a middle-aged.

05:12
middle-aged female sometimes I feel. That's like me after a long run. So Stacey, I have gone to crowdsource some questions for you. I've got a few questions which I sent through earlier, which they're quite long, but they sort of speak to some of the things which you talk about all of the time. And then I was just sitting here just wondering about some other things like I was eating my lunch and I thought, I wonder what Stacey's eating for lunch today? So I'll kick off with that.

05:40
And then also, you know, you were all over the internet. You were all over the podcast Airways. I feel like it's, and of course I am, I am your target market. So this is why I see you quite a lot and, I love it. But it does like, do wonder though, because like, I think you really, you really sparked the woman are not small men movement, regardless of what people think about what that might mean. You know, I hear people going,

06:08
I've never heard anyone say that. It's like, well, it's not the point. It's been around. And it's actually just more, you what does that actually mean? And of course things have changed since you sort of spearheaded this movement. I feel like you were like this, began sort of like beating the drum and then everyone else sort of jumped on board for, which was great because studies have come out to have a look at

06:35
some of that earlier research and to critique it in the of context that it was done and also how that might translate into actual human studies and things like that. But I feel like if it wasn't for Roar and if it wasn't for you just really being quite, I suppose, absolute in what you say, I don't think that we would be having these conversations and I don't think you would be in the likes of the Mel Robbins podcast and Andrew Huberman and all the rest of it.

07:04
How does all that feel? I feel like there's another entity that's out there. Cause when I'm here and I'm just hanging out with my friends, I'm like, yeah, okay. And they'll ask me questions and I'll say, well, this is what the science says. And we'll get into these conversations and they're like, oh my God, we saw you on Mel Robbins. I'm like, who is that person? It feels weird because I am ultimately an introvert, but then I see like there are 33 fake me's on TikTok.

07:33
And there's a fake me on X or Twitter and they're spouting disinformation. And that really affects me because I don't want to be a purveyor of misinformation. I'm not giving opinions. I'm disseminating the science. It's not just one research study. It's a holistic viewpoint. And I think that's what kind of

07:54
Gets me into these deeper conversations where people might be siloed and go, what do mean that you have to have 30 grams of protein post exercise? There are no sex differences. It's like, well, maybe not in the absolute intake of muscle protein synthesis, but we have to look at the hormonal perturbations that are associated with hypothalamic perturbation. We look at hormone disinformation that comes when you're not eating. So there's more of that holistic view, but people aren't catching onto that. They're like,

08:22
Really silent in that one thing and then this is where we start having the haters. I'm like, I'm not giving opinions. I'm like trying to disseminate science as much as I can wrapped around this one topic. And that's the nuance that gets me into trouble. And that was actually one of my, one of my questions is one of more like what I've seen as well is that sometimes social media and podcasters don't allow for the nuance.

08:49
some of the podcasts you're on, they themselves are very black and white. These are the five things that you've got to do before you leave the house in the morning. Then when you're trying to have a conversation like fasted versus fed training, example, there's just no room. Sometimes I see that it's sort of like put into a... You almost put yourself in a corner because there's nowhere else to go. It's got to be, yay or nay, so where are you going to go?

09:19
Right. Or I get forced into, I've had a couple of hosts who have tried to force me into saying something that validates their view. I'm like, well, no, that's not what I mean. And then the clips get brought out and they're just creating clickbait. So the most recent reason one is cold plunge, right? You see the clickbait on cold plunge. I was like, I'm not saying it's bad for women. I'm saying ice baths don't benefit women like 15 degrees do ice or cold plunge is still.

09:47
You still get all of these benefits you just don't have to get in the ice. I mean go back to the original research they weren't doing ice baths on men or women. They're looking at fifteen to eighteen degrees is when when half came out with all the ice baths in the breathing without the signs that that trend to go off and now everyone thinks ice baths. I know we look the stress response there are sex differences in thermoregulation sex differences in stress response we see that women optimally respond with.

10:14
with the best metabolic and neuroendocrine changes when they're in warmer temperatures. And that's what doesn't get pushed out. And that's what creates the haters. Yeah, it's interesting. I was actually just last night looking at a post on Susanna Solberg's, so big, can't remember her last name. I feel like she really exploded onto the scene through one study and one podcast interview. And now she's got a business around this, PhD. And someone's wrote,

10:43
what would you say because Dr. Stacey Sims says that this is that ice baths aren't for women or something. And then Susanna said something else, and then in my head, I'm like, I don't even think that's correct either. So then I almost never comment, but I'm like, I'm pretty sure you and Stacey are aligned on that 15 degrees, because this is what Susanna said, and that you actually get health benefits from it. But yet to your point, like you, like,

11:10
I often see, and I wonder how often you see yourself misquoted or your view misrepresented actually. All the time. So yeah, I mean, I get into online, like people will pit me versus Mindy Plez on the fasting thing. I'm like, we've done a podcast and we align on many things. It just depends on the population and the nuance of the person that you're talking about. So please listen to this podcast because I'm not like, I'm not anti anything.

11:37
There's a bell curve, right? And if we look at the generalization, this is the generalization, of course there are outliers. So we can talk about the outliers and we can talk about the generalization, but don't put words in my mouth and make me look like the mean person. I'm not that person. And, and I mean, it's, listened to your podcast with Mindy and I really enjoyed it. And it really just struck me that her original audience were likely insulin resistant, sort of overweight woman.

12:06
who may just be, you know, have struggled with the usual advice of move more, eat less versus your original audience, which is the athletic female who's trying to balance a workload physically along with life and her hormones and stuff. And so they're two very different audiences, but unfortunately with social media, but we're all out there listening to the same. And then,

12:31
Like I've been talking to a couple of newspaper journalists as well. And they're all on the protein. Cause like we hear one gram per pound of body weight. How, does this come from? How can you be an influencer saying this? I'm like, hold on. This is my lane. This is my research. This is the research I draw from. Am I saying that this is appropriate for someone with CDK? No. Am I saying this is appropriate for someone who is significantly sedentary and overweight? No, we need to look at whole diet first. It's like, don't put me the absolutes.

13:01
Yeah, yeah. And unfortunately, you're just, are at that, if I say level, I guess you sort of are where people just love absolutes. Like we're not happy in the gray. We want sort of, we want answers. We want black and white. And then they will just look to you for it. Yeah. And when I try to put in a nuance, you're like, I don't want to know. Yeah. People will hear what they will hear. So, so Stacey, actually I heard you on another podcast because I've listened to quite a few podcasts lately.

13:31
And it was really great actually. I think it was the live well be well with Sarah. Yeah. And the way I heard you talk about menstrual cycle and the effect of that on training and training response, that's really shifted over the years. Like the way you talk about it now from that molecular level is how you described it. And I think people don't appreciate that as things change and as we know more that you're

14:01
message has actually shifted a little bit from maybe the original days when there wasn't the research on humans to sort of more particularly show, albeit it's still very small human trials now on it. So how much now do you think that differences in how people should train around the menstrual cycle is actually individual versus what we know on that molecular level?

14:28
I mean once we start really looking at that and people actually start digging in and doing the research and when we look at the original stuff like i said earlier is molecular we see all these strategic molecular changes so when you make the generalization assumption and humans and you see molecular stuff in humans and yeah this is what we said. Then we start looking at okay well what about the psychological component.

14:53
And now we have ovulation, like people were kind of ignoring ovulation. look at the earlier studies, you might have a bleed, but that doesn't mean you're ovulatory. And there wasn't a lot of confirmation. So as we go through now, we're seeing, okay, one, we have these ideas around what does ovulation mean? If we can confirm ovulation through blood and urine metabolites, great. But there's a very, very small population of active women who actually ovulate all the time.

15:20
And we can't retrospectively go, okay, well, day one was your bleed, so day 14 is ovulation. Because we don't even know if that bleed was representative of an ovulatory cycle. So when we're looking at it, we still have the people that say there's absolutely no impact of menstrual cycle on training. like, well, maybe, but if you talk to anybody that trains on a regular basis and you look at top teams of women, there is an impact.

15:47
Maybe it's psychological. Maybe it is a little bit of the hormonal effects because we see all these changes that occur. So you can't discount it. So that's the conversation right now. So now it's like, okay, if you can firm ovulation and you know how you feel with that confirmation, then you can start to see your own patterns. If you can't confirm ovulation, then still keep track of sleep, how you feel, what your cycle is doing. Look at your bleed pattern.

16:16
Is it a normal lead pattern? Is it lighter? Is it heavier? Cause that can give you some indication. So you can be on the fly to change what you're doing to maximize your response to training. Cause if you're going to go and you're going to push on a really hard day when physiologically and psychologically, you just don't have it, then you're not going to get the most out of your training on that day. So as the science evolves, I'm evolving with the science. Cause the more I learned, the more I want other people to learn because I'm always learning.

16:45
I've encountered some people who are top of their field and they're like, I know everything. I don't want to learn anymore. I'm like, how can you know everything? You have to continuously be learning and admit the fact that science has changed. I'm happy to admit the fact that science has evolved and that's great because now we have more data to pull from. So let's explain that a little bit more and get into the nuances of that. And yeah, and it.

17:11
benefits women because if they see change in their belief pattern, it gives them the opportunity to go, oh, wait a second, am I not stress resilient? What's happening here? So it is an early warning sign that you as an individual can actually keep track of. Or if you miss a few, then you're like, well, what's going on? What's happening here? Yeah. And also I think that I always think about like the evidence in front of us as being not just what you see in the literature, but I mean, I like to think about how we've evolved to adapt over time and over the,

17:40
the hundreds and thousands of years that we've been on this planet. But also what about the individual in front of you and you your client base and things like that. Because I know women who feel absolutely bulletproof around ovulation and I know others who just want to sort of crawl up on a ball and just not come out for three days. Right. And there's uh, minimal smudge, which is the pain upon ovulation that goes undiagnosed and isn't talked about, but

18:09
We did a survey, we had over 3000 responses of women who said they get it and it's arbitrary on either side. It takes them out for a few days. They feel completely wiped out. They go to the physician and the physician's like, well, there's nothing like that's nothing. It's just in your head and like, no, it's actually physically real. So you have to put that into the context too. Like you're saying it's a sociocultural thing that people just ignore.

18:33
And also if you come from a family background where you never talked about your period, you wouldn't really want to say, I'm tracking it unless you're in the confines of a safe environment. Or if you come from, unfortunately, my daughter is going to have this where everyone talks about it all the time, you know, then it's not that big of a deal. You can talk about it. Right. So we still have a long way to go. I'm just happy that it is starting to evolve. Yeah. Nice one. And what are we, what tracking apps do you recommend that people use?

19:02
There's two really good new technologies that have been FDA approved that look at urine metabolites and it's an app on your phone. So it's like it's in the fertility space and they are looking at dipsticks and tracking your LH surge, confirming ovulation with urinary metabolites. And you can use that to track all the other things that you would on something like fitter woman or wild AI and that kind of stuff. So you can be really advanced in that.

19:32
Or you can do pen and paper. You can use whatever works for you. I do like some of the newer apps that are using algorithms written to their own data so that the AI is driving insights based on your own data to give you better insights. So there's a lot of new stuff that's coming out in FemTech that is realizing that typical algorithms don't work for women. So they're rewriting them specific to the data that they're collecting.

20:02
You have to kind of look around because there's so many things out there. So if you're looking for something that's more objective, looking for urinary metabolite confirmation, if you're looking for more insights to kind of confirm or not confirm what you're thinking about yourself, then you can look at things that use AI algorithms that's based on your own data. Or if you're old fashioned, and paper. Yeah. I love that one that it's looking at you and your own patterns.

20:29
Because when you look at studies and you look at other data sets, you like, oftentimes we're reported on averages or we're compared against an average number, which regardless of what you're looking at in science and physical exercise science or just health, very seldom is anyone like an average. Yes, the bell curve. Yes, the bell curve. Yeah. I was explaining that to my daughter. was like, look, here's the bell curve.

20:59
Everyone so focus in the middle and of course we have outliers and we have to actually understand that those outliers are just as important. As the curve itself because you learn a lot from the outliers and sometimes those outliers are close enough to the curve they get washed away in that curve. Do we really have to like i learn a lot from what's on the fringes. Do you then overlay on what's on the average.

21:27
but you have to be careful with the data that's coming through because there still are quite a few studies that will take men and women and put them together, which then washes out the outliers. Yeah, interesting on that because I've seen people say, you know, we've done studies and now we know that there's no difference between, you know, in any of the menstrual phases and therefore we don't need to worry about accounting for menstrual phase. And this has opened up the field

21:56
in exercise science, so now we can bring men and women all together and treat them as one. I know, it's frustrating. Yeah. Because it's not just menstrual cycle, right? Because when they're looking at it and saying there's no menstrual cycle phase difference, if you're looking at a lot of the research that they're citing, there are quite a few things wrong with that. First, the menstrual cycle phases may or may not have been confirmed with ovulation.

22:25
Second, it's primarily the unusual population of human or white women. So if you're looking at that population, which is a very small end and saying that there's no difference, then what about the rest of us that don't fall into that very small population? I can't really tell you how, what the percentage is of women who are truly human or because there's an ongoing.

22:52
Issue within the fertility research is showing the search and upsurge in an ambulatory cycles in sedentary and active women. So for pulling it together and saying yeah in sports science there's no difference so we can test and do this and that and it doesn't matter we put men and women together you can test in any kind of phase. Are we gonna actually find out what the nuances are if you keep doing the same shit over and over and not learn from past history why are we always looking at it from the male in.

23:19
right? Because if we'd started science with women around the table, instead of men around the table, we would already have scientific protocols that would either allow for or actually not have to worry about menstrual cycle changes, ratios of estrogen progesterone, which is more important than an actual phase because we have perturbations almost every day, and perimenopause because, you know, women

23:44
a job research by the time they're forty because people are afraid of certain changes within the ratios but they don't say that they change the menstrual cycle site now is the ratios that were worried about so when they're now opening up and saying there's no difference really based on what an end of twelve of women who may or may not have actually been human area. And you're not taking into account where they're coming from cuz a lot of that research in the naysayers are coming from.

24:12
an upper socioeconomic class of white, you men are women. And that is not a population that expresses the rest of sports science. So what's your advice? Yeah, no, that's great. And so what's your advice then for women listening to this? And now they're like, well, shit, Stacey's just said, you know, that what I'm hearing from the likes of these researchers over here is bollocks, but they're saying, well, that you don't need to worry about that. So.

24:41
where should people focus their attention? Like the woman listening to this, what should she really be focused on? On herself. Yeah. We've gotten so far removed from understanding what rating of perceived exertion is, sessional RPE, what the mental and physical are. We get so wrapped up in wearable data, which does not represent female physiology. And so women have gotten so removed from saying, it's okay, I don't feel well today.

25:11
And people should have the permission to say, you know what? I woke up and mentally I was a two physically. I was a two out of 10. I'm just not going to go to the gym today and be okay with it. Right. And it takes a lot to understand that and unpack it. But if we can give ownership back to women, give the ownership of their bodies and how they feel back to them and say, well, if you're coming into a research study, then we'll have to quantify stuff. We'll have to look at, at tracking and we'll have to look at some blood tests.

25:40
And maybe we're retrospectively saying, oh, your first test was in this phase and your second test was in that phase. And we know definitively because we have these blood and urine markers. That's a research study, right? But for the general woman, the biohacking stuff that's out there, it's nice to have, but inherently let's bring it back to how we feel. one. What wearables do you suggest for what it's worth? I mean, I'm sort of.

26:10
I'm sort of drawn to something like the aura ring, haven't got one, because actually I don't think I'd use the data. And there's no point. Like I've got a watch, which I don't even wear to bed because it's annoying. the only way I know what kind of sleep I have is literally how I feel and my own sort of perception of what the night was like. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So should we actually be thinking about an aura, be thinking about a whoop, which, you know, I know that you have had consult, I think you consult on

26:39
I can't remember which one to be honest. did. Yeah. With who? Oh yeah, yeah. But I got really frustrated because they still wouldn't change algorithms. And for me, if you're looking at the data and you know that you have a rich data source where you could to the individual compare day one of bleeding to day one of bleeding of the next phase and day 28 to day 28 of the next cycle to get better insights.

27:08
it would be more applicable, but they don't. So if you're looking at these wearables, I don't know any woman who can actually get into the proper green recovery the week before their period starts, because naturally, autonomic nervous system changes. Progesterone comes up, it increases your heart rate, increases your respiratory rate, tanks out your HRV. So if you're going on the recommendations from these wearables, then you can't train well. But physiologically, maybe you can.

27:38
Right. So I have a watch just like yours. It's on analog and it's not attached to anything. I like mine for the steps actually. That's my goal. I think I feel like I'm a professional step getter. Oh, I've got steps on there, but that's about it. It's not attached to my phone. It's not attached to anything. Yeah. Yeah. I gave up wearing a whoop just because I was like, I don't use the data. And so why am I allowing my data be

28:08
be collected if it's not really being used for me. I feel like people get emotionally hijacked by what they read as well. It's like the same with the scales, you know, and with any way with which we may be able to measure what we then tie into our worth, it's, you know, that there's this emotional regulation issue. And if you can't objectively look at the numbers, then they're just not that helpful. No, not at all. Yeah.

28:36
And I keep trying to diss the diet culture and tell people like, let's see how strong you can get. How much lean mass can you show and feel you have? And if you put that lean mass on and you're obliged by the scale, you're not going to be happy. Speaking of lean mass, I mean, you're pretty jacked. Like, is this just some sort of genetic? Like, is it genetic, Stacey? Like you've got the best shoulders and arms. Everyone says that. Everyone is not lying. but like, is it like, are you just very...

29:05
Um, uh, is it in your genetics or do you just trained really hard? Probably trained because like, you look at my lower body, I have been trying for years and years to develop hamstrings and glutes super strong, the lean mass just isn't there. And that could be because I have really long femurs and attachment points and that kind of stuff. Upper body. mean, I was a collegiate rower. I rode high level.

29:32
I tried forever to lose all my upper body mass when I was racing bikes, but I can look at a kettlebell and with the history of strength training starting when I was 16, boom, shoulders come back. Stop it. Just say that every woman doesn't think, oh, bloody hell, that's Stacey Sims. Yeah, but you know, I try to do lots of squats and deadlifts and yeah, I put the weight on, but it's still got skinny pin legs. Stacey, you're, so if we think about,

30:01
I just want to finish off with the menstrual cycle stuff. find it super interesting. Now, I think, are you involved in a study, or you're leading a study through Massey looking at the menstrual blood? Like I remember, yeah, I heard about that about a year ago. So where are you at with that? And in fact, is it all right if you just give us sort of brief on what it is you're actually looking at? Yeah. So a few years ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with my mentors, Marcia Stavannik at Stanford.

30:29
We're talking about menstrual fluid as being a marker for so many of the common blood draw tests, because it's something that is non-invasive. A woman produces it every month or so. So why weren't we looking at it? And Marsha's like, well, there are some people who are trying to look at the proteomics of the menstrual fluid. So then I came back and had a meeting with Claire Boddenhorst who's at Massey and she's like, this is a great idea. So we're like, okay, let's try to design a study.

30:58
and see what we can find because we want to see can we look at diabetes? Can we look at heart, cardiovascular risk factors? Can we look at PCOS, endometriosis, maybe HPV? What can we find in the blood? So we just finished data collection of 105 women over the course of seven months each. So massive data pool. Found that day two is the best day to actually get the adequate amount of

31:27
cell differentiation within the menstrual fluid. And we have definitely been able to determine A1C from it. And we're looking at other markers for it. And the goal for us is then to have an at home kit for people who can't get to a doctor, who worried about things, want to confirm or maybe have a check on their health. So it's not a definitive, yes, you have diabetes or yes, you're HPV. It's, yeah, here's

31:57
your results, let's get a hold of a doctor. Kind of like an at home pregnancy test, right? Yeah. Oh, yes. And if it says yes, you're like going to the doctor. If it says no, you're like, eh. Yeah. So did you, yeah. And did you find, like, were you surprised by some of the findings of, from the menstrual fluid or were you hoping to be able to elicit a little bit more from it? Like, and, and when is this going to be published for? For everybody.

32:24
Yeah. Yeah. So we're working on the first two publications at the moment. The most interesting part we found were how willing women across the board of all ethnic groups were willing to give menstrual fluid. Yeah. Cause you know, we always talk about it being a taboo. Yes. Really high Pacifica population that's in the study. Fabulous. Which is really great. Right. And it isn't a barrier to entry because you're not looking at putting a needle in someone's arm.

32:53
So that was really fascinating, interesting, and more people got involved in there. Like, what can we do next? We're looking at the results of what actually we're, looking for. It opens up whole Pandora's box. We have to find the right assays and techniques of the assays first. So we had to develop the assays in order to actually look at what is in there. And this brings me back to the first point where I was talking about people around the room, design the scientific studies. I'm like, if it had been women.

33:22
Maybe people would have been looking at menstrual fluid a long time ago. But now I'm like, it's a supposed discard fluid, but it has so much information from inflammatory markers all the way down to other things that we might not even know about yet. That's amazing. And how many studies have actually used menstrual fluid? I haven't. None. Yeah, I was going to say, I haven't really looked, but I haven't come across any. That's amazing. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah. There are a few that are looking at it, but using

33:51
dry spot. So they dry the blood and they dry the fluids, which denatures the proteins. It's like, doesn't really tell you anything. And we have been able, with the help of this really smart physiologist at Massey, how you spin it down and separate it be able to use it as an actual fluid for assays. And that's the first of its kind. Amazing. And have you now got it just sort of collected and in a place safe, ready to use once?

34:21
the assays have been developed and is it sort of now from the assay perspective, you thinking about what else do we want to look at developing an assay for that and then just sort of testing, testing waters, I guess. Yeah. So we have taken some of the existing assays for things like hormone and A1C and comparing menstrual fluid versus blood serum and using it in both assays. So we found a few that will work, but there are still others that we want to look at from.

34:49
proteomics standpoint that we'll have to develop. So that's kind of like the side project. But first we want to say, yeah, we can do this. And yes, we can see these things. And yes, from a sociocultural perspective, it's pretty acceptable, especially in the female space. If you tell someone, yeah, we can find out all this stuff from menstrual fluid. People initially have an ick factor. And then other people are like, oh, that's cool. I don't have to stick a needle in my arm. I don't have to in a cup. Yeah. Super easy.

35:18
Hey, speaking of pee in a cup, what are your thoughts on the Dutch test? I'm not a huge fan of it. Some of it, if we're looking, I should say the panel that the Dutch test provides is way too varied to be valid against a lot of the true clinical tests. If we're doing a test retest in someone and we are looking at the familiarization aspect of really standardizing before we do it, then you're going to have a more accurate result. If we're looking at things like cortisol,

35:47
And we're looking at some of the estrogen metabolites. We're looking at the progesterone metabolites. There are some really good clinical blood tests that validate that. But then some of the other things that people worry about, I'm like, it hasn't been clinically validated. So I'm mixed on it because it can give good information, but it can also perpetuate some misinformation. So it depends on what you're looking for in those tests.

36:12
So are we thinking about the organic acids that they measure? They're not yet clinically validated. Is that one of the things that sort of bring about for you? Yeah. And then some of the metabolites that do come out are in a different form. So it doesn't actually tell you how active that particular hormone is in the body. It just says that yes, it's present. So those are the things that need to be worked on a little bit more before we can say, yep, everyone go for this. If we could pull some parts of it out and say, yep.

36:41
do this for these particular metabolites. This is great for estrogen and estrone, estriol, and this is great for progesterone. This is great for aldosterone. This is great for AVP. But then we start getting into some of, your organic acids and those kinds of things. like, don't know how active it is in the body because we haven't actually had a clinical validation for that yet. Yeah. I think there's that real potential

37:10
for it to be so clinically useful if it had reached that point that it is validated. And hopefully it's just a matter of time, right? So I'm like, if you were to condense it into the things that are clinically valid, it would get more traction and then you can expand it. But people aren't doing that. Yeah. Super interesting. I feel like I'm like just throwing questions at you, Stacey, and seeing what sticks. Cortisol? Cortisol, you mentioned cortisol and this is...

37:36
It is probably one of your, mean, I you love talking about this. In fact, I mean, you talk about this stuff like all week. So I see a lot. So first things is in my sort of knowledge on cortisol testing, and I've had a look at it, like in research, doesn't look that great. Like a lot of the studies that have been conducted have been done on different populations, different time of days, not validated. It's not the timing is all off.

38:04
yet people make inferences from it and then people sort of throw cortisol out like it's some sort of bogeyman. Yeah. And people don't understand that we need cortisol to live. A hundred percent. And so, so what I've seen a lot of people say is I shouldn't exercise in the morning because my cortisol was already spiked. I shouldn't drink coffee in the morning because my cortisol will spike. And of course shouldn't train fasted because my cortisol will spike. Now,

38:33
I know how you feel about faster training for maybe everyone or maybe just for a population and we can absolutely talk about that. In fact, I'd love to get your view because that was one of the questions. But yeah, do you want to give us a brief on what you think, Stacey? People have skewed it to being such as boogeyman and negative hormone, where it is a natural part of how we live and our circadian rhythm. You need cortisol to come up in the morning, not...

39:02
Spike is everyone saying, but it naturally comes up right the same as your core temperature naturally comes up as an awakening as part of your circadian rhythm. It comes down, especially after you eat because then your sympathetic drive isn't as high because it doesn't need to be. And then, you know, it, it has peaks and troughs throughout the day and it starts to wind down so that you can sleep natural occurrence.

39:26
We see changes across the lifespan, especially like women and perimenopause because hormones are all over the show. The body's perceiving as stress where more of a sympathetic drive. So of course baseline cortisol is going to be elevated, but if you're having a baseline and you're having peaks and troughs from that baseline, that doesn't mean it's bad. It just means that you have a new set point. But what becomes bad is the dosage, right? It's the devil in the details. If you're.

39:52
Continuously elevated in a sympathetic drive and your baseline cortisol is at a level that you used to be a peak. We have to do something about it. If you're worried about, you know, getting up and doing training first thing in the morning because you don't want to do high intensity because it's going to spike and peak your cortisol. Well, we have to take a step back and go, cortisol is released during exercise anyway. Right. What we don't want is the peak to be so elevated that you can't hit the intensities that you want.

40:20
And it doesn't come down afterwards. So how do we mitigate that? How do we manage that? And so I'm with you. It's like, it's gotten a bad rap, but it's not, it's something that's necessary for us. And we have to have these peaks and troughs throughout the day, just the same as our luteinizing hormone goes up and down throughout the day. have different spikes in estrogen, different spikes in testosterone across the day. But I don't think that it's been really well studied to understand those nuances.

40:49
And again, it's the individual, like some people are super sensitive to it because they're more parasympathetic driven and then all of a sudden their sympathetic drive comes up. Right. And other people are, are like really energetic and sympathetically driven all the time. And that doesn't, doesn't create undue stress. It's that bell curve, right? So we have to look and people are so worried about the extremes and if they fall in the middle and they understand how their body responds, makes everything a little bit better.

41:18
allows people to take control. I really like what you've said about what your usual baseline is and how your natural sort of drive is. And I feel like, and you must see this a lot with people that you work with, Stacey, is that a lot of high achieving women probably do run in that sympathetic nervous system drive. And it's sort of almost the way that they are wired. it's not necessarily, I mean, for a lot of their life, it's probably not a bad thing. It's obviously

41:47
Obviously they've been able to achieve what they have based on that. But then at some point it can become too much for some people. Yep. Exactly. And that's what we're seeing in the late perimenopause state. Like women have been used to sympathetically driven and now that their drive is elevated because of the change in the hormones, it's becoming a stress they can't be resilient to. Right. And so it's, it's change in a baseline for them, but it's not necessarily cortisol.

42:15
It's the way the body's responding to changes across all of our receptors, across all of our systems where all the systems are like, oh, wait a second. So it's everything that's causing this undue response. And now they're like, oh, I've got too much cortisol. It's like, no, you're not stress resilient. So let's look how we can become more stress resilient in the situation where we are. Yeah. Nice one. And, and to that, I wonder how many women are like, well, shit.

42:41
On perimenopausal, I've got to go on hormone replacement therapy now to smooth out the ride as I transition into menopause. My nutritionist brain also thinks, I wonder where your iron's at? I wonder what your vitamin D is doing? I wonder what your thyroid's at? And are you even sleeping and stuff like that? Which of course, HRT, pre-menopause, that can help people then make changes. But sometimes I feel like people are looking for a magic bullet.

43:10
and they think it's at the end of that doctor's appointment. Yeah. Now I am very tired of the rhetoric out there where everyone has to be on menopause hormone therapy because it isn't the golden goose egg that everyone's looking for, right? It does not stop change. It slows the rate of change, but it does not stop change. It doesn't stop dementia. It doesn't improve cardiovascular risk factors.

43:38
It slows those risk factors, but doesn't stop it. There's a post that was put out by one of the protein researchers today that menopause is not associated with muscle mass loss. I'm like, are you kidding me? Yes, it is. You are pulling from a cross-sectional research study where in it, it says it did not control for menopause status or hormone replacement therapy. So you can't draw those conclusions, but yet people are going to say, Oh, well.

44:07
If menopause isn't responsible, but I feel like shit, then I probably should go on menopause hormone therapy. Like no tool in the toolbox, man. Like let's look at lifestyle. Let's look at these things. And if you're having a significantly horrible time, then yeah, use it. It's not an off thing, but it's the same as telling someone we're going to put you on Gabby Pinton. How would people feel like if everyone was told they need to be put on Gabby Pinton because of menopause issues? It is a therapy, but not everyone wants to jump on it. Right.

44:37
So I don't know why hormone therapy has become skittles of the perimenopausal world. I can see a lot of influencers have pushed it out there. There are a couple of voices in the UK that are very adamant about it being a female deficiency syndrome for women who are perimenopause, meaning deficiency in hormone. It's like, no, it's a natural part of aging. There are things that happen in the body that prepare it for losing

45:05
the impetus of these hormones, but there are many things that we can do to take control of that. And that's what frustrates me because we see all of these things from a nutrition and an exercise and asleep and cognitive behavior therapy. But unfortunately it takes work and we have become society of not wanting to be challenged and not wanting to put in the work. And I feel like sometimes women feel like they're in between a rock and a hard place when they're having these conversations with their

45:33
girlfriends and their girlfriends are all on hormone replacement therapy or they're on maybe even GLP ones or other, I suppose, medications to help them and they see a real shift and they're like, well, why should I be doing or not why should I be doing, but it just feels like it's so much harder if they're only focused on lifestyle and things like that. So that comparison trap I feel, particularly in light of social media is pretty strong too. Oh, yes.

46:02
It's, it's awful. I'm like, yeah, there's so many, I know quite a few women who across the world that aren't on it. And they question it. They're like, should I be on it for my brain? Mike? No, look at the research. Yes. Estrogen receptors light up because there's not a lot of estradiol, but that's normal. I just trying to get everything, but we're also getting the signal for down regulation. What we need to look at is brain metabolism.

46:27
What do we need to improve our brain and brain health? We need strength training for neuroplasticity. We need lactate productions for better brain metabolism. So those are two things that we can do, right? Instead of going, oh, gosh, all my estrogen receptors are lighting up. better put on, you know, better put on this patch or this gel. Ma, you know, know, Lara, she's, yeah. And we have conversations like this all the time and she's really sort of surprised.

46:52
that one of the number one recommendations that people seem to be hearing is in perimenopause, get on estrogen. And because that's never been something that she's recommended. She's been like a naturopathic doctor for ever. totally. I know. And I appreciate her work so much. I like have people talk, where do I go for PCOS information? Go to Laura. What about progesterone and progesterone cycling? I'm like, yep, go to Laura, go to Jerrilyn. Yeah, UBC.

47:21
There's so many different viewpoints that are not in that curve of the bell. They're the outliers. So they get put in the, that is the fringe and we don't want to listen to that. Where you have people who have no science background, Oprah comes to mind with her menopause platform that was just, how do I feel about things? And now everyone thinks that they have to be on menopause hormone replacement therapy, not from science, but because of influencers. Yeah. Yeah. Now I hear you.

47:51
So Stace, I wonder, am I the antithesis of everything that you suggest people don't do? Like I'm an endurance runner. I do strength train for sure, but I do not do that heavy lifting, three to five reps, that kind of thing. I'm definitely much more of an eight to 12er. And I have gotten much better over the last couple of years at actually pushing myself.

48:20
But what is heavy? Define that for me and for everyone listening, because I have conversations like this all the time. Heavy is relative. If you have no strength training background, then two kilos might be heavy. If you've been resistance training for a really long time, then maybe 100 kilos is heavy. Right? So it's very relative. It's relative to your training history. It's relative to technique and comfort in the gym.

48:48
That's a relative to what your love is. Right? So if you're an endurance runner and I look at what you're doing and you're doing ultras, I'm thinking, okay, well, you don't want one get injured into you want the back half of the race to go really well. We need to get you in the gym, not necessarily for longevity, but to build you the strength and resilience you need to be successful in your endurance event. Does that mean we have to take some training time away from the endurance? Absolutely.

49:16
Does that mean it's going to impede your progress? Absolutely not. So we have to look at the context, right? And so when I talk about lifting heavy, I tell people, you know what? It could take eight months to a year to learn how to lift a heavy three to five properly. I don't want anyone to go in the gym and start doing dead lifts without understanding technique and form and how to keep it out of your back.

49:39
trap bar hex bars are really great for that. Cause then you have to center the weight over your hips and you don't necessarily have to put weight on it, but it just teaches you the technique. Maybe you're starting with a backpack that has a one kettlebell, a 10 kilo kettlebell in it. And you do air squats with that, right? That's heavy for you at that moment in time, but we always want people to look at form technique, add load form, technique, add load. And I talk about three to five because that's the very epitome of a power base set in

50:09
Strength training, but that doesn't mean that's what I want people to do all the time. Right. We have contrast training, which is you're doing some heavy stuff and then doing some plyo stuff. have periodization aspects where you go from lighter loads to heavier loads to lighter loads. You might also have some where you're doing a max set where you're doing two or three of the heavier loads and finishing off with a 15. Again.

50:35
as we were talking earlier, it's the absolutes. It's not an absolute, right? We have to look at where you are, what your training history is, and how we can keep your body progressing through strength and getting really good quality muscle and bone. Nice one. I am a fan of the chaos theory, which I did tell you. Of getting into the gym and just going, right, I know what I'm gonna work. I'm gonna work my legs. I'm gonna work my quads, my hammies. I'm gonna work my back. And I'm gonna work until I...

51:05
can't like to two reps to failure. I've gotten much better at understanding that and that feeling. And I do that three times a week. Good. Okay. Perfect. Good. And I thought that you would say heavy as relative, you know, because of course I hear all the time, Stacey says you have to do X, Y, Z. And I'm like, that's not, there's no context to that. And given the opportunity, I knew that there would be, there's always context. mean, we can't.

51:34
Yeah. So here's context for you. Because of my injury, right? I have realized that I can deadlift quite a bit and I can hip thrust quite a bit, but hamstring curls, my hamstrings were cramping with a five kilo dumbbell. Ouch. Yeah. Relative, right? Yeah. that's, it's like, I don't know, 125th of what I could deadlift. Yeah. So it's context. Yeah.

52:04
For sure. And of course, you yourself, mean, everyone knows that you've come from an endurance background and you still enjoy endurance sport. You just said you did 110k sort of bike ride yesterday. Like I feel like this is another place where people are, people misrepresent what you say in the sport world, Stacey, because you sort of all for, the way I've heard you talk about it on podcasts, you've never dissed endurance training, but what you have dissed, and I'm in the same camp as you, is like,

52:34
The woman who feels she needs to do all the cardio because she wants to be in shape or, you know, it's part of her body composition sort of goals and stuff like that. And she's really just wearing herself down. Like there's quite a difference. Absolutely. Yeah. I come, I have stirred endurance when I was 13 and I was, either ballet or running and my instructor's like, you need to choose running. So I've been running since then. Right. And it's been the love all the way through, but.

53:03
As you get older, your body starts to need more. It's like, okay, I need to be stronger. And as a researcher looking at the benefits of strength training say, yeah, everyone should be doing it. It doesn't matter how old you are, but the population that I'm in and you as well, 30 plus women aren't used to strength training. So it's a nuance and a new thing.

53:27
But I'm not telling people to throw away their mental stress relief of going out for a run or a ride or a swim. No, absolutely not. Cause the mental health capacity is so important, especially when you're surrounded by so much noise that we are now. Yeah, for sure. And I, I definitely from a training load over the last few years really changed how I approach running from a load perspective. Like I'll have a few high mileage weeks, but seldom is it.

53:55
You know, it's certainly, I think 80 would be, or 85 is my usual, if I'm training, 60 would be my sort of off, you know, off season type thing. Yeah. And with the ultras, you have to spend so much longer out there. So it's actually a lot lower intensity, which has been super enjoyable. Yeah. I mean, I think about when I was bike racing, if you did below 300 K in a week, then something was wrong. It's like, how can, how can you fit that in with the rest of life? You can't.

54:23
Do you have any ideas, Stace, how a lot of sports have changed like that? Like running, like there is a more of a push towards that sort of higher intensity, maybe the polarized. Recognizing that it's not all volume, has swimming changed at all? I mean, does, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so either. Just, yeah, just crazy to me because kids that I'm talking to, they're like getting up at six o'clock in the morning, they're.

54:49
They'd be back in the pool after school for a couple of hours. It's just seems so like it seems a lot. Yeah, it is. I've worked with a few younger girls who, you know, starting to feel like they can't pull the water properly and really ungangly. I was like, well, one, your body's going through a lot of changes around puberty. So your whole biomechanics are changing, but two, the load that you're under, if you're looking at swimming 3k twice a day, that's just way too much. The coaches.

55:18
being a miss when it's trying to put that kind of volume loading. So pull them out and you can do some dry land training. We're doing three squads a week and you're racing better. So what does that tell you? Yeah, interesting. And I wonder whether it's, I mean, it must all come down to culture, right? And what swim coaches do worldwide. I wonder how many swim coaches are actually doing things differently or just a little bit afraid to do it differently in case people bomb out at the. Yeah.

55:44
I mean, I've seen our squad evolve from coach to coach and it used to be something that was very manageable and people were progressing to something where now a lot of people are wearing fins to keep up and the load has just gotten so much and numbers are dwindling. So if you're thinking, okay, well as a coach, what's going on here, right? But there isn't that pause. And I see that as happening more and more where you're getting younger coaches coming in who have learned from the older coaches where volume is key. And.

56:14
It's having a lot of burnout effect, especially on younger athletes who are like trying to progress and they just burn out. Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, I don't know if you even know this, but has that changed? Has the athlete changed over the years as well? Like were kids better able to get into the pool 20 years ago and do six K in a day compared to now or? Probably. Yeah, I would say so. I was on a call earlier today and, um, one of my colleagues was talking about

56:43
His wife was at a works in a podiatry office and a five year old came in complaining about foot pain. And the podiatrist was like, well, how much loading does he do? And what does he do for physical activity? Watches screens all day. It doesn't go outside, all that kind of stuff. And so they're like, go away for a month. Make sure he goes outside a half an hour every day in place, get some loading in the foot came back a month later as we were normal for a five year old. It's because they're not having the proper loading.

57:13
Whereas if you think 20 years ago, kids were active all the time, walking to school, riding to school, playing on the playgrounds. They were looking for their friends after school, playing and stuff. So jumping in the pool was just part of that that they did. Cause the fitness level was much more elevated than it is now. Yeah. And you, and as I understand it, you all sort of turn, you've got a bit of an eye on puberty right now, don't you? You've of course coming out soon. Yeah.

57:40
Three weeks or next course comes out. one. So what's who's it for? Primarily for 15 plus girls and healthcare providers, parents, coaches, men or women doesn't matter, but it's just explains all the physiological and biomechanical changes, the sociocultural things to be worried about how to coach. What's different between girls and boys with regards to coaching and conversation and language. Um, I see it even.

58:10
Like my daughter's 12, almost 13 and just the difference in engagement between her soccer team and the boys soccer team. And the coach is not quite understanding why they can't coach the girls. Like they do the boys. It's like, girls don't want to be singled out, but if you have them doing pair stuff and footwork together, they think it's fun and engaging. And then they fly, but for boys, they like to be pitted against each other because they have that aggression. So it's a different way of coaching. So go through all of those nuances in the course to try to help.

58:40
Elevate how we are approaching developing girls trying to keep girls in sport trying to get them to understand that bi-mechanically they're changing as well as the physiological and the menstrual cycle and you have a plateau and a little bit of a dip and then you come back out of it Those things are not discussed. We just throw them together and say, okay Let's see what we do. We have to reteach our girls how to run how to throw out a land how to jump how to enjoy sport And that's not being done

59:09
So that's the goal. Yeah. And you mentioned girls 15 plus. Is it for parents with younger girls as well? sort of pre puberty? Yeah. It's just the information in there is a bit saturated for younger ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I appreciate. Hey, some of my crowdsourcing questions just to finish up Stace, because I'm mindful of the time. Someone asked when you were going to update next level.

59:37
Next level just came out two years ago. What? You don't have a hundred hours to rescale the research? It's quite new. Was it last year that it came out beginning of 24 or end of 23 or? Or part two came out last year. Next level came out a year ago, May. Okay. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that's very new. Okay. So yeah, no, we are good there. Okay. Nice one. It'll be down the pipe. We got to get.

01:00:05
Got to get a puberty one out, maybe a longevity one. Oh, I love it. We'll update a few things. Nice one. Protein recommendations for women, are you happy with them at 1.6 to 2 or 2.2? Is that sort of where you put it? I do. as I was saying earlier, explaining to some of the popular journalists when we're looking at the literature, one, we know it helps attenuate sarcopenia in older men and women.

01:00:31
We see that it's important for regeneration repair. The current RDA is on really poor nitrogen studies and sedentary men, not women. And if you're trying to lose weight, we see that the higher protein intake helps preserve lean mass and bone and facilitate fat loss. I'm always like, yep, 1.6 to two is really good training blocks that are really intensive.

01:00:59
Maybe you're under a lot of travel stress or under a lot of other stress. That's more of a catabolic state. Let's bump it up to 2.2. Oh, nice one. I often recommend my vegetarian clients, but mostly women have an essential amino acid powder alongside a low protein meal. Yeah. That's okay. Good. Yeah. I tell people to, um, you know, if you are looking at using a pea protein isolate, which is right on the cusp, you might want to add some EAAs to that. Just boost it up. Yeah. Nice.

01:01:27
I like that idea of adding it to a lower protein meal. Yeah, just because some people just do not have an appetite for protein and older people especially. And in fact, I my dad, like he's, I get him loaded up on the amino acids for that reason, because he takes like a 300 gram cut of meat and it lasts in the entire week. Cause he's, you know, 73 or whoever old he is. And I'm like, dad, we need to do something about that. Yeah. I tried to get my mom to upper protein cause I've been home quite a bit the past few months and

01:01:56
getting everyone on the protein bandwagon, my sister, my mom. And so I was telling my mom, you can add some protein powder to your yogurt. And she's like, I eat that and I'm full all day. I'm like, okay, we need to modify that. Yeah. Okay. So my mother-in-law, same thing. She starts her breakfast at like 10 o'clock and it's berries, yogurt and protein powder. She puts half of it away until like two and has a muffin. And I'm like,

01:02:19
you that full? just don't get it. I know it's satiating but yeah, it's not that fulling. I know. Stacey, if someone trains fasted and they feel absolutely fine, and their hormones are great and their body composition is fine, would you tell that person they need to change what they're doing? I'd say ideally, yeah. Yeah, okay. I would. And there's a lot of rationale behind it.

01:02:47
Again, I'm looking from the holistic. As an exercise physiologist looking at that and you're going in and you are trying to train hard, fasted. First thing comes up is what fuel are we using? Especially we're trying to high intensities or we're trying to do strength work. High intensities, we aren't using fat, right? So we need clear out our blood sugar and then we know women start to use more amino acids and not so much fat. So if we're looking at high intensity work, we're chewing into our muscles.

01:03:16
If we're looking at strength building work, same thing, right? If you have just a very small amount and Abby Smith Ryan, you and see did a really cool study looking at just a small amount of protein before strength or high intensity work and showed that if you're having that 15 grams of protein beforehand, it, helps facilitate a increase in your epoch or your excessive post oxygen, your elevated metabolism, post exercise, and helps with fat metabolism later in the day.

01:03:45
So if someone's looking to modify body composition, it's like you're making it harder for yourself by not having a little bit of protein, a little bit of carb before. And then from the endocrinology side of things and brain health, I think about the hypothalamus. And if we are exercising fasted and we're creating the stress that again, releases cortisol, creates a metabolic cascade, and the hypothalamus is saying, hey, this is a threat and there's no nutrition to overcome it.

01:04:14
There's some key down regulation that occurs that can affect appetite, appetite hormone, our luteinizing hormone pulse. And it might not be clinically apparent in blood tests, but it's a subclinical change to things like our luteinizing hormone pulse, which brings into more an ambulatory cycles, which won't necessarily show up in a blood test. And you won't necessarily see it because you're still bleed with an ambulatory, but it's there.

01:04:42
And the more we have these an ovulatory cycles, the less progesterone that we are producing, because you aren't producing it without ovulation, a little bit from adrenals and stuff, but not enough to support brain health and, and nervous system regulation. So there's a whole cascade of events that occur, but for people who are like, I just want to change body comp. I'm like, just a little bit is going to help facilitate so much faster that body composition change that you're after.

01:05:10
And then from a health perspective in my brain, I'm like, and it's going to help your brain. It's going to help your hormone regulation. It's going to help your appetite. It's going to help all of these other things. please. Yeah. I am with the people I work with from a fat loss perspective. That's, that's definitely a population I recommend because you just feel better when you have fuel on board in the morning. And then, you know, when you are, you know, in a fat loss phase, like you can feel pretty hungry sometimes and a bit miserable.

01:05:40
some other time. So if you can like really nail your workout and feel really good and you feel that you're getting somewhere, that's my rationale for pre pre training nutrition. And then, and similarly, cause I know there've been shots have been fired over how much protein post workout and do you really need it? I still, I do think that people are in a calorie deficit need to get some fuel on board early. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah, the, the posts that got picked up that we put out, I think women's

01:06:09
Health UK put it out and saying 30 to 35 grams post exercise. And then people jumped on it was like, there's no window. I was like, well, like I said earlier in the podcast, muscle protein synthesis, maybe not, but one, we want to look at eating opportunity and two, hypothalamus perturbation. And those two are not part of that protein researchers, um, guess view and she's very siloed and just protein metabolism and muscle protein synthesis.

01:06:39
Yeah. Okay. I'll give you that. But for all the other things, there is a window. We also see that there is a window for euglycemia where women come back down to normal way faster than men. So if we're trying to manage that acute phase of pulling carbohydrate in without insulin, we do have a window. Yeah. And I do feel that people underestimate what a good load and a good breakfast can do to really set you up.

01:07:07
You are just in so much more control of your appetite and your mood and your ability to make decisions, emotional regulation, like all of that across the day. And to your point, if you struggle to get your protein in, then actually just make a deal with yourself that you do it in and around training. And then you're, you know, 40 grams up for the day. And circadian rhythm, because it's significantly impacted by light and dark or day and night. And when we eat food.

01:07:35
So if you're trying to have a regular circadian rhythm, get really good sleep and you're holding it fast or you're doing all your stress without food, your circadian rhythm is just all messed up. Yeah. And I definitely changed my viewpoint on fasting over the last five years. know, like it's made such a huge difference to me and also bloody hell, breakfast is great. Like who would want to skip breakfast? I don't know. It's my favorite. I know. Hey, Stacey, what's something people might be surprised to know about you?

01:08:05
That I hate being on camera. And I hate being on the stage. Like the high. Well, and you're an introvert after all. Yeah. Um, and when I'm highly stressed, I don't eat well, which is something that's been part of me forever. But yeah, so yeah, those are things. And that's the thing actually with stress, like for some people, really leads them to that bingeing or that.

01:08:34
overeating, but others and, and, you know, I'm similar to you. if I feel stress in my stomach. Yeah, I can't eat and it's awful. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I was surprised to hear that you enjoyed a whiskey actually. Oh yeah. And I think that comes from growing up with it. Like my dad would come home from work and the old fashioned military, always a drink after work, would be a whiskey. So I associate the smell with my dad. And then as I got older, I learned to appreciate what a really good whiskey or scotch was.

01:09:03
And that's, yeah, it's good. Nice one. Actually, Barry and I last year in Melbourne went to this whiskey bar and they did something called, what is it? It's a Boilermaker and it's a pairing of whiskey and beer. It's really delicious. Yeah. That was the thing when I was at university because it was the Purdue Boilermakers. Ah, yes. Okay. I think that beer's moved on a bit since then though as well Stacey. So now beer's much more delicious.

01:09:33
I'm allergic to hops, so I can't appreciate beer. That's why I appreciate whiskey. Yeah. Well, I will appreciate beer for you on your behalf. Okay, good. That sounds good. Stacey, thank you so much for your time this afternoon. You've been amazing. I didn't really look at it. I think I asked you about two questions from my list and the crowdsourcing ones, but I feel like we covered quite a bit and actually just added context where people might be struggling to understand some of the messaging. don't know. I hope so.

01:10:02
Nice one. That's fun. And I mean, I'd say where can people find you? But it's pretty bloody obvious, like at Dr. Stacey Sins. Yeah, pretty much. Unless that account's been hacked too and then I have to change it. Yeah. Well, let's hope not. Stacey, thanks so much. Thanks. It's been fun. Appreciate it.

01:10:35
Hopefully you enjoyed that. know that people just love Stacey and I really loved having the opportunity to chat with her and it was so nice because we really have known each other for over 20 years. Even though we've moved in the same circles we really haven't connected and I feel like that's really changed over the last few months so I was really excited that she was willing to come on.

01:10:58
And next week on the podcast, I bring back another fan favourite, Dr. Dan Plews, and we chat about his transition into the hot new sport, high rocks. Until then though, you can catch me over on Instagram threads and X @mikkiwilliden, Facebook @mikkiwillidennutrition, head to my website, mikkiwilliden.com, book a one-on-one call with me. All right, team, you have the best week. See you later.