← The Dr. Hyman Show
The Dr. Hyman Show
Women Are Not Small Men! Why Fitness Advice Is Failing Half the Population | Dr. Stacy Sims
01:23:04
Loading summary
Transcript407 lines
- [00:00]
Dr. Mark Hyman
What if brain fog, anxiety and mood swings aren't simply all in your head? What if the health of your mind actually starts deeper in your body, in your gut, in your hormones, metabolism and your immune system? Well, let me tell you, the connection is real and it affects how you think and you feel every single day. And that's why I created Brain Shaping Academy, a six week program that shows you how healing your body can help you heal your mind. Brain Shaping Academy relies on the same targeted nutrition and lifestyle strategies that I've used for 30 years to help my patients improve their their mental, emotional and cognitive health. So if you want to feel calmer, clearer, and more in control and stay sharp and protect your brain as you age, check out Brain shaping academy@Dr.hyman.com brainshaping that's Dr. Hyman.com brainshaping we have a
- [00:49]
culture that actually has ignored women in the research field. You have this great line which is women are not small. Men. What the hell does that mean?
- [00:57]
Dr. Stacy Sims
But we're told that we just need to do what the men are doing, but we're still not getting the same gains that the men are. Almost all the stuff you know with exercise and nutrition has been based on male data and generalized to women.
- [01:08]
Dr. Mark Hyman
What are the nutrition mistakes that women are making?
- [01:10]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Mostly now they're listening to all the fad diets and they're listening to the rhetoric that's on social media and they're not really paying attention to, okay, who am I? How do I respond? When am I hungry? You're not going crazy. You're just being compared against the wrong baseline. We need to stop the rhetoric of old is frail.
- [01:27]
Dr. Mark Hyman
What you're basically saying is that by lifting heavy weights for women, it slows down Alzheimer's risk.
- [01:33]
Dr. Stacy Sims
The very first thing I tell every woman to do is to put some hard meetings in their calendar. That's a wellness meeting with themselves for longevity. You have your genetic code, but it doesn't have to dictate what's happening.
- [01:45]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Dr. Stacy Sims is a leading exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist whose research focuses on sex differences in training, nutrition and health, particularly for women. If you've been dealing with anxiety, low energy, or trouble focusing and still feel like you're missing something, you're not alone. That's why I created the Brain Shaping
- [02:05]
Academy, a new program that looks in
- [02:07]
places most people never think to check, like nutrient deficiencies, the health of your gut metabolism, your immune system, and lots more. So join the wait list and get Special pricing@Dr.hyman.com BrainShaping this episode is brought to you by Row Nutrition. Now, every day, from the moment you wake up, your body is dealing with thousands of toxins. You can't see through the air, water, food, even the products you use. And your body has this incredible built in system to handle all of it. It all comes down to one molecule.
- [02:37]
Glutathione.
- [02:38]
It's often called the master antioxidant detoxifier. It supports your liver, it helps neutralize toxins, protect your cells from damage.
- [02:45]
It's really amazing.
- [02:46]
But here's the problem. Stress, poor diet, constant exposure to environmental toxins all deplete your glutathione levels. And when that happens, your ability to detoxify and protect your body starts to break down. Now, not all glutathione is absorbed well. So delivery really matters. And that's why I use rose liposomal glutathione. It's designed to actually help your body absorb. Use it because at the end of the day, it's not just what you take, it's what your body can use. And right now, Row Nutrition is offering 20% off their entire product line with my exclusive code hyman@ronutrition.com that's R H O-nutrition.com and use the code HYMAN for 20% off site wide. Is coffee good or bad? For me, this is a question I get asked all the time. And here's the truth. Coffee isn't inherently bad. It's a major source of healthful antioxidants, the American diet. And it can boost mood, memory, metabolism, even sports performance. But coffee can also be addictive. It can spike your stress hormones, it can irritate your gut, and it can leave you crashing later. Now, some people handle it fine, while others don't. It really depends on your biology, your stress level and your habit. And that's why I enjoy Nandaka from Peak. It's a coffee alternative designed for people who think in decades, not hours. Nandaka gives you calm, sustained energy while supporting cellular resilience and immune balance without the jitters, without the crashes or gut issues of ordinary coffee. Full spectrum reishi, the mushroom of immort body, is studied for immune signaling and cellular stress response, while the puarti and L theanine deliver steady focus and clarity. Add in ceremonial cacao, the perfect fat for a luxurious, satisfying morning ritual. It tastes like an artisanal coffee experience, but it's built like a longevity stack. You feel alert, calm and ready for your day. A ritual that compounds over time, not
- [04:25]
just A quick jolt.
- [04:26]
If you want a smarter, more sustainable way to start your mornings, get up to 20% off Nandaka and begin your intentional wellness journey at peak life.comHyman that's
- [04:36]
P I Q E-Life.comHymen Stacy, welcome to the podcast.
- [04:43]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Thanks. Great to be here.
- [04:44]
Dr. Mark Hyman
All the way from New Zealand.
- [04:46]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, but I'm home. From New Zealand to home.
- [04:50]
Dr. Mark Hyman
You know, your work is really unique because you're not a doctor, but you're an exercise physiologist, you're a scientist and you double down on things that are health, not disease.
- [05:02]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Correct.
- [05:03]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So most medicine, most doctors are focused on disease, not health. They don't even know about health. In fact, my joke is we never took a class in medical school creating Health 101. So we have no clue what health is. We just think it's the absence of disease, which it's not.
- [05:18]
And we don't know how to advise
- [05:19]
people on how to navigate the phases of their life to induce, create health. And your work is so great because, you know, men have had a lot of focus. We have a misogynistic culture, we have a patriarchal culture. We have a culture that actually has ignored women in the research field predominantly. And there are studies, but they're kind of like, kind of mostly in the, in the margins. And, and what your work has done is really focused on how do we think about advising women to take care of themselves through the life cycles. You know, premenopause, perimenopause, premenopause, all the, all the different phases that are important. And you know, I, I worked for almost a decade at Canyon Ranch where most of my patients were, you know, 35 to 60 year old women. And so I kind of had an immersion course in all the things that women were experiencing. And it was just so clear to me how woefully inadequate it was to just sort of deal with them. And you, you really taken this on, really setting a different conversation for how to think about women's health and fitness. And, and, and you, you have this great Are not small men.
- [06:28]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right?
- [06:28]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay.
- [06:29]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:29]
Dr. Mark Hyman
What the hell does that mean? I know other than the obvious language, they're different.
- [06:35]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I find it funny that that's become like the resonating mantra and tagline because the origins were when I was at Stanford doing my postdoc. I was also doing some undergrad teaching and in the afternoons everyone's sleepy and I would talk about training principles and practices and trying to go through all the systems that were sex differences. So I would open it up. Women are not small men. And that was subtitle of the class that I was teaching. And you'd say that. And people are like, what are you on about? What does this mean? And I'd say, well, you know, the cardiovascular system, there are inherent differences. We know from Jennifer Trimmel's work that a heart attack comes on differently for women versus men. Why? So I'd get into all the nuances and hopefully enlightening all the students. And then when I started a sport nutrition company, I was, like, one of the very first people that ever was like, we need different sport nutrition for women than men. So we had a men's line and a women's line, and the tagline for the women's line was, women are not small men. But it was way too early. Early because we got a lot of pushback, but still kept trying to pursue it. And then I kept that tagline because people resonated with it so much. And basically, it's like, almost all the stuff, you know, with exercise and nutrition has been based on male data and generalized to women. And I don't find that appropriate, especially if I'm a woman and I want to optimize my health in my life. And so I'm like, okay, I'm running with that. And that's how it kind of got out there.
- [07:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And you've been one of the few people who's really, like, taken on the. The task of researching women. Yeah, specifically because most research has been on men, and that's come at a great cost to women, unfortunately, because we can't apply the same principles of healthy nutrition and exercise to women as we do to men. So can you kind of talk about
- [08:16]
Dr. Stacy Sims
that a little bit, how I fell into that? Yeah, I'm a little bit bullheaded because maybe, maybe not. I grew up in a military family, and, I mean, that's kind of how
- [08:25]
Dr. Mark Hyman
we wanted to be a Navy seal.
- [08:26]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I did want to be a Navy seal. I mean, just about a mile from where we are. Saw my house this morning, and, yeah, growing up in a military household, you
- [08:34]
Dr. Mark Hyman
would have been a good Navy seal, actually.
- [08:36]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Maybe. But it wasn't allowable. Right. I was.
- [08:39]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I shook your hand. I'm like, oh, wow, Okay. I can't wrestle this girl. She's like, she'll knock me down.
- [08:45]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. And so when you're used to not having any confines on you and you just. Your friends are boys, your friends are girls, you do this, you do that. As running cross country, my, like, teammates and I would all go for a run and we're all men and women. And then you get divided into the two groups to run the girls race or the boys race. And your times aren't that different. So you're like, yeah, okay, whatever, it's just the way things are. But when someone tells you that you can't do something as an occupation because you are not the right sex or the right gender, it really throws you for a curveball and you're like, what? So that sat with me and then when I got to university and I'm in exercise physiology and all the P. PDFs and the Journal articles and textbooks represented he or they. And the only time they talked about women was in a pathophysiological standpoint where they're like, they're anemic, they don't get their periods, they break their bones, they get stress fractures, they get over trained. And I was like, this is not representative of me. Like I am on the crew team and we're training hard, but I'm not getting anemic, I'm not breaking my bones. Like how do I train to prevent that? And no one could answer that question. And I was like, this is not right. Like why do we put as much work into all the things that we're doing? But we're told that we just need to do what the men are doing, but we're still not getting the same gains that the men are. And so that was kind of the undercurrent which kind of pushed the trajectory forward of doing research to answer these questions for me as an athlete. And then my friends who were athletes and then who became coaches and et cetera, going on through the years of their careers too.
- [10:20]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Amazing. Okay, well, let's get into it. Let's get into it. Because if women are not small men, what's happening to them metabolically, hormonally, as they kind of move through their 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond that.
- [10:33]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. So I like to tell people it really does start in utero when we're looking at sex differences versus hormonal differences. And then when we get to puberty, we really start to see the effects of hormones because we see boys typically get stronger, faster, more aggressive girls, their center of gravity changes, their biomechanics change, they put body fat on and then, oh, here's your period, right? And they drop out of sport and activity. They start to feel very self conscious and then that carries forward. Then when we get into our reproductive years, you have either there's no such thing as a 28 day menstrual cycle. There's all sorts of variation within length. Right. And then we have hormonal contraception. What are you on? What's the formulation? What's the generation of the progestin? All of those things have a hormonal effect. Or are you using an IUD or not? So there's so many different things in there. Do you have endometriosis or pcos? All those affect you as well. And then we get into perimenopause and all the wide variations that happen with hormones and the undercurrent of aging, which also is another factor. And then we get to postmenopause. And then when we think about the data that accompanies that, it's all male data, who is in more of a linear fashion. So when we start unpicking it and we see all of these things where women think that they're going crazy, it's like, you're not going crazy, you're just being compared against the wrong baseline.
- [11:51]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
- [11:52]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And yeah. So when we get asked those questions like how do you differentiate what is endometriosis versus PCOS? I was like, actually, in 2026, we don't have a definitive test. We know that you have symptomology and you can go for an invasive test to find out, but there isn't anything simple to tell you. What are our symptoms? These are our symptoms. Do I really have it or not? You have to go to your physician to find out.
- [12:15]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, that's true. And, and there's a lot of changes.
- [12:18]
You know, I think, you know, my, my experience, you know, working at Canyon Ranch, you know, taught me that there's this kind of chaotic period of, of, of shift in hormones that happens in women in their late 30s, 40s, early 50s. And it's, I, I, it's like the Four Horsemen. It's like insulin, which is all about blood sugar regulation, and that leads to increasing, you know, belly fat, which women tend to get. But it's not inevitable.
- [12:43]
Dr. Stacy Sims
No, it's not.
- [12:44]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And a lot of women think, oh, this just happens, and they don't have to get that little belly. Two, the stress levels go up because they're kind of in this generation of high stress work. Their parents are getting older, their kids are teenagers, and their marriages are stressed. It's like a pressure cooker. And so that cortisol is going crazy. And then they get thyroid, which also tends to go kind of sideways a lot of the times. And that can be caused by stress, environmental toxins, and that's a big factor, affects one in five women. And then you got the sex hormones that are all over the place and they, and they're affected by everything, especially lifestyle, what we eat, how we move, sleep, how we navigate stress, relationships. All those things have massive impacts on hormones and affect how women feel and what they can do and what they can't do. And also on their over level of metabolic and physical health. So that's kind of the soup that they're in.
- [13:44]
And the real question I have for
- [13:46]
you is how do women properly navigate this in terms of diet and in terms of exercise? And there's a lot of sort of kind of trendy things like intermittent fasting or protein or this. I want to get into kind of all the nitty gritty of it with you. So let's start with the big picture and then kind of go into some of these subtopics.
- [14:08]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Okay, that sounds good. I'll unpack it all for you. Because I think the biggest thing is women think it's happening to them. And if you were born with the uterus, you're going to go through this. But if it's happening to you, it doesn't have to be negative. It means that you're going to go through this, but you can actually take control and see how you can improve and empower your body as it's going through this natural transition. And I think that's one of the biggest things that women don't understand. They just think that they're going to become like an unfit, really unhealthy person, even if they've been active. So if we look at what's happening, we know that in the early 30s you're fine, and then your mid-30s you're like, wait a second, something's happening here. The training that I'm usually doing isn't quite working. Maybe I'm not training hard enough. So they start to really question what they're doing and try to find different plans to help them lean up or get a little bit stronger. And then we really see a definitive switch in the 40s. And this is because we start to see a fluctuation of our hormones. We start to see a decrease in ovulatory cycles. So we don't have as much progesterone. We also see a shift in our gut microbiome because when you start having a change in your sex hormones, you start having a decrease in your gut microbiome diversity. And unfortunately, with that and the stress, we start to see a drive to increase the obesogenic Phyla of the gut microbiome.
- [15:30]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And in English that means bacteria that make you fat.
- [15:32]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly.
- [15:32]
Dr. Mark Hyman
In your gut.
- [15:33]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right. It like makes you crave.
- [15:35]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So I gotta translate something.
- [15:36]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, no, no, that's good. Makes you crave simple carbs, you know, extracts more energy from the food. And a lot of the times in
- [15:44]
Dr. Mark Hyman
this mentality, what you said there, I just want to double click on that because you just don't think people are going to gloss over. Your bacteria can control your appetite.
- [15:53]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Absolutely.
- [15:53]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And if you have bad bugs in there, you got to figure out how to reset your gut in order to regulate your hormones and your appetite and your metabolism. There's actually a whole thing called metabolic endotoxemia, which means you get basically insulin resistance and diabetes from inside. Bad bugs in your gut.
- [16:08]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly. And it changes your neurotransmitters, as we know, like serotonin, melatonin, even dopamine take a hit when you have more of the obesogenic phylactics going around. So then that confounds all the variables that are causing anxiety and stress and depression. So when someone starts coming to me and saying what's going on? I'm like, well, these are all the things we're having sex differences, of course, with aging. And we see that when we have the aging conversation that's happening right now, we know that there's a definitive difference between the way men's muscle and bone age versus the way women's muscle and bone age. For example, if I start to get a little bit geeky, I'll try to explain. We have two contractile proteins, so two proteins that grab onto each other to make the muscle fiber tighten to give you a contraction. One of them is myosin, the other is actin. Right. So myosin and actin, they bond. We have different, what we call isoforms of myosin and we start to have dysfunction.
- [17:00]
Dr. Mark Hyman
That means different subtypes of the muscle contracting fibers called myosin.
- [17:04]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. So the main one that really bonds with actin to create a strong contraction starts to become dysfunctional. Then when you also have a change in estrogen, it further exacerbates or causes that change. So women's first complaint is they don't feel powerful, they don't have strength or runners go. I don't know what happened. My pace dropped from a 7 minute mile to a 9:30 and I just don't know what's going on. It's because we're having this dysfunction in our fast twitch fibers.
- [17:33]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Ah, wow.
- [17:33]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So when we start going Quality and
- [17:35]
Dr. Mark Hyman
the function of the muscle changes related to the hormonal changes.
- [17:38]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right? Right.
- [17:38]
Dr. Mark Hyman
As we get older, especially once we hit our 40s and beyond, our bodies actually become less efficient at using protein. In functional medicine, we sometimes call this anabolic resistance. It basically means the same amount of protein that worked for you at 25 may not support your muscles the same way at 50. And that matters because muscle is one of the most important predictors of healthy aging. It supports metabolism, balance, strength, and overall resilience as we get older. Of course, I'm a huge believer in getting protein from whole nutrient dense foods, but that's always gonna be the foundation. Yet many people still fall short of their essential amino acids and their body's need to support muscle maintenance and recovery. Especially busy moms, juggling careers, families and everything else. Are you wondering what essential amino acids are? Well, they are the specific components of protein your body cannot make by itself, which means they must come from your diet. And they're important for supporting muscle maintenance, for recovery and normal metabolic function. And that's why I like Perfect amino. It provides a balanced blend of essential amino acids your body needs to support muscle protein synthesis, especially when PA with resistance training and a healthy diet. I think of it a bit like a multivitamin for your protein intake. A simple way to fill in the nutritional gaps when life gets busy or your protein intake isn't ideal. If you're focused on healthy aging, on strength and maintaining muscle as you get older, well, this is gonna be a really helpful addition. You can learn more about Perfect Amino@bodyhealth.com and get 20% off your first order with code HYMAN20. That's Bodyhealth B O D Y health.com and use the code HYMAN20. Now if you know me, you know I've spent a lot of time in my own life learning how important it is to support the nervous system and get restorative sleep. In today's world, many of us are stuck in constant fight or flight, always
- [19:22]
on, always stress mode.
- [19:24]
And that's hard on the body. And it makes it hard to recover, to repair, to sleep deeply. And one tool that's non negotiable for
- [19:29]
me is my sauna time.
- [19:31]
Stepping in my sauna helps shift the body into parasympathetic mode, the rest and repair state where detoxification, recovery and hormone balance can work most efficiently. It also improves circulation while helping calm the nervous system. And many people notice that regular sauna sessions improve relaxation and sleep quality. For me, an evening sauna is a Signal to my body to slow down, letting me rest more deeply. And Sunlighten's Impulse sauna even has six custom programs like relaxation and detoxification. So you can step in, choose your session, and let it do the work. If you want to support your sleep recovery and nervous system, check out Sunlighten today by visiting sunlighten.com and use the code HYMAN to save up to $1,600. That's sunlightened. S U N L I G h t e n.com and use the code Hyman.
- [20:21]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So we start to see that happens first and then you have cell death or loss of muscle mass. But for men, they don't have that. They lose muscle mass. So they maintain their fast twitch fiber function and their strength capacity. Yes, you have to work on it as you get older because you're losing muscle mass.
- [20:37]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It takes hard work. I'm 66. I can tell you, you gotta work a little harder.
- [20:41]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, it does. But when we start talking about strength training and the conversation out there about strength training, it's not just about lifting weights to failure to optimize women. We really have to get them to understand that neuromuscular connection. Like, we want to work on the heavier end. But not only that, one of the other sex differences that's really apparent is dementia and Alzheimer's and cognitive decline. And that is exacerbated during perimenopause, partially because of the receptor changes with estrogen dropping. But also we see, like neuron connectivity or the way that the brain is wired starts to change when we're getting older, as well as having hormone shift, which causes anxiety and depression. But we see in some of the research that came out even last month that if you're doing heavier load lifting, which is that power range where you're doing heavy loads, 80% of what you think you can do five or six reps, then it stimulates neural conductivity improvement in the prefrontal cortex, which is primarily driving cognition. And then you have other changes in other parts of the brain that help. All of this helps attenuate or slow dementia and Alzheimer's risks.
- [21:50]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So if we're looking at slow down, so, so you just. I want everybody to hear what you just said. What you're basically saying is that by lifting heavy weights for women, it slows down Alzheimer's risk.
- [21:59]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yes.
- [22:00]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay.
- [22:00]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And the reason for that is I
- [22:02]
Dr. Mark Hyman
might stop you occasionally because, like, you're used to like a encyclopedia and I want to make sure people understand what you're saying.
- [22:07]
Dr. Stacy Sims
It's because I'm So excited about that.
- [22:09]
Dr. Mark Hyman
If you don't mind, I'll just kind of like pause occasionally. That's good to go to translate.
- [22:13]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. Because I'm like. Part of the problem is we have brain metabolism change, so we know that glucose is not as effective as a brain fuel as, you know, insulin resistance comes up. Glucose isn't as available for other systems of the body and we want to increase neuroplasticity. So that means how our neurons are forming and firing and talking to each other. And if we create a new motor pattern or we need a stimulus to recruit more muscle fibers, that's that neural connectivity, and that's what you get at the very, very low end. And heavy strength training, it's a neural conductivity and that's the important factor in the resistance training concept. I'm not telling people who've never done resistance training to immediately start on that end. Any resistance training is great. You have.
- [22:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
You don't want to start with a hundred pound weights.
- [22:58]
Dr. Stacy Sims
No. Start with body weight, work your way up with the I in two or three years of getting down to the heavy weight.
- [23:04]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But this is.
- [23:04]
Honestly, I feel like I know a
- [23:06]
lot of stuff, but I never heard this before.
- [23:09]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Oh, my gosh.
- [23:10]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I never heard that by lifting heavy weights you're increasing your brain connectivity. I know exercise is good for your brain in general, but this particular piece is new to me, so I'm sure it's new to everybody out there listening.
- [23:21]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. It was a randomized controlled trial that came out out of 100,000 people that was just published from the UK last month. How forward. It's really fascinating because they looked at heavy lifting versus moderate intensity, which is your body weight and your lighter loads and longer rep ranges. So your 10-15s. And it was only the heavy end that affected prefrontal cortex. The moderate weight and the higher reps affected other areas of the brain, which is great. It's a good improvement. Right. Because you're still affecting neural connectivity. But for the concern of cognition, we need that prefrontal cortex increased connectivity and functionality. So when we're looking at what are we doing to optimize health, that's one of the first things I say.
- [24:03]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But is there, is there any understanding of the timing of this? In other words, if you start like when you're 40, obviously it's better, but can you start as late as 60? Yeah. And is it going to achieve the same benefits?
- [24:15]
Dr. Stacy Sims
We don't know how robust it is, but that randomized controlled trial was looking at people who were 60 plus I'm
- [24:21]
Dr. Mark Hyman
asking for a friend because I didn't start strength training until I was 59.
- [24:24]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So you're good, you're excellent. You're protecting your brain. We're all going to be having Zimmer frame races, not because of our brain and our bodies, because of our joints. So it doesn't matter when you start. We say start when you can. It's never too late to start. And we're having more and more research come out in 70, 80 year old individuals that are showing the heavier rep range, which is relative to what you can lift. Improves not only bone and lean mass, but also brain health.
- [24:49]
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's amazing.
- [24:50]
Dr. Stacy Sims
It's like the one thing that everyone should be doing. And I come from a massive endurance cardio background and I've always had strength training as the undercurrent.
- [24:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.
- [24:58]
Dr. Stacy Sims
But now all the research is just pointing to how important it is in today's society where we don't move that much, that we have to do the push, pull motions and put our bodies under load. Not necessarily cardiovascular load, but actual load.
- [25:12]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I'm on the video version of this podcast. I'm going to give my team my picture because I had, I was like a runner. I was running like 5 miles a day from 14 until like 55 or 6. Right. And I was riding my bike 100 miles a day or 40 miles or 30 miles and I, I, and I was lean, but I wasn't strength training. And then I started when I was 59 and then I had a comparison picture of me at 42 maybe, and at 62 and it's like you can't believe it. Yeah, And I never would have thought that was possible. But you know, you know, it's never too late.
- [25:46]
Dr. Stacy Sims
No, it's never too late. I mean, I was full endurance too. I ran 19 marathons before I was 20. I did Ironman, I did Xterra, I did bike racing and I had strength training on the undercurrent. But I didn't let people know I was doing it because it wasn't appropriate for women.
- [26:02]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I just wasn't doing it. I was telling myself lies. I was doing yoga. That's like strength training.
- [26:06]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I've heard that too, but you probably see this too. We get dexas and it's women that look healthy because they look lean and they're runners and stuff, but you get the DEXA and they have a high amount of visceral fat compared to what they should be. And their bone density is relatively low and they're Like, I don't understand. I eat clean, I run, I do all this stuff. It's like you're not strength training and you're not eating enough. Because if you're not eating enough, then you're not supplying your body with the fuel that it needs to rebuild. So it's tapping into bone, of course, because it's part of the aging, but also the stress of exercise without enough fuel. And that higher visceral fat is because there's a change in our lipids in a conversation between the liver and the fatty acids that are circulating, that esterifies them to then be stored as visceral fat. So we can fix that.
- [26:54]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So basically what you're saying is women who look lean are what we call skinny fat, or we used to call it tofi. Thin on the outside, fat on the inside. And you can tell that by doing a special kind of very, very low radiation X ray called the DEXA scan that measures bone density for osteoporosis, but also measures fat in your body and muscle and the distribution. Right. Because a lot of these scales, you can't really tell the distribution, these bioimpedance scales, and you can kind of. Kind of get a rough sense. But your arms and legs could be like, you know, 10, 15%, but your belly could be 30%.
- [27:30]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right.
- [27:31]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that's not good. And you may look thin.
- [27:34]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right.
- [27:35]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that actually leads to some of the same cardiometabolic risks of heart attack and diabetes and stroke as being overweight.
- [27:42]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right.
- [27:42]
Dr. Mark Hyman
You're under lean and over fat.
- [27:45]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly. And I often give an example, because I'll get women who come in and we get the dexa, we get their bloods, and their LDL has suddenly shot up, and they've never had problems with cholesterol before. It's like, well, yeah, that's a dysfunction of estrogen, because estrogen kind of helps with cholesterol and risk factors. And when you start losing that, if you are not eating enough and you're not doing exercise stress to help the body understand what's going on, then you're gonna have this increased lipid, negative lipid Prof. Profile as well as poor bones, not really fantastic muscle quality. And we see this increase in visceral fat.
- [28:19]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So let's sort of dig in on
- [28:21]
two bits of this. One is the food and one is the exercise.
- [28:24]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [28:25]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Because those are independent variables that we have control over. Right. We can't control our genes. We can't control our parents. We can't control our height, our age. But these are things we can control. So on the exercise front, you know, is there a difference in what women should be doing when they're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and if so, what is it? And can you unpack that for us? And what's the right mix of cardio hiit training or interval training and strength training? And what kind of strength training? Because I'm hearing there's like, body weight, there's lightweight, there's heavyweights.
- [28:59]
So can you kind of help us
- [29:00]
really unpack all that?
- [29:01]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So when we're in our 20s and early 30s, pretty lucky, our reproductive years, we can kind of get away with everything. I really impress women when they're in their 20s and 30s to pick up strength training. And it doesn't matter what rep range you're doing, just as long. Long as you are doing strength training and have an eye to being muscle centric and you can do variations of high intensity, low intensity, your body recovers really well. Because we have the benefit of our sex hormones. Women also have the benefit of having more endurant fibers. So we already have a robust amount of mitochondria, and we have more proteins for mitochondria, respiration, better antioxidation responses, and these are inherent sex differences. This doesn't matter if you have estrogen and progesterone or not. So we're already really endurant. We need to work on our fast twitch. We need to do a little bit of intensity and strength training. When you start to get into your.
- [29:50]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So you can get away with a lot.
- [29:51]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, you can.
- [29:52]
Dr. Mark Hyman
This is the bottom line. In your 20s.
- [29:53]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, yeah. That's why you're like, all the Hirox people are like in their mid to late 20s. You're like, yeah, when I was back in my 20s, I'd probably pick that up too. But now not so much. But when you start to get into your late 30s and start having more anovulatory cycles, which means that you aren't producing as much progesterone because you're not ovulating and you have a change in your estroge progesterone ratios. This is when we start to see a little bit of dysfunction in how you're training.
- [30:20]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Just so people understand this. So when you're a guy, you make sperm your whole life. When you're a woman, you're born with a certain number of eggs and it starts declining from the day you're born until you go through menopause. And as you go through 30s and 40s, you start to have less eggs and you may not ovulate every cycle, which means you have estrogen but not progesterone.
- [30:43]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Correct. And when we start seeing and more of those anovulatory cycles, people don't necessarily know that they're anovulatory because they'll still have a bleed. And this is why when we might bleed heavier. Right.
- [30:54]
Dr. Mark Hyman
You might have heavier bleeding because progesterone stabilizes the uterus. And then when you have just estrogen without the progesterone, you get like clots and heavy bleeding and more cramps and all that.
- [31:03]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right.
- [31:04]
Dr. Mark Hyman
That's what happens is when we get in their 30s. Yeah.
- [31:06]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And they're like, what's going on? So when we talk about like.
- [31:09]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And then they get anemic.
- [31:10]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, and then they get anemic. So they'll talk about like menstrual cycle phase based training. It's like, well, no, let's, let's take that off the table because that's one of the conversations. You train according to your menstrual cycle
- [31:20]
Dr. Mark Hyman
phase and you're saying that's not a thing.
- [31:22]
Dr. Stacy Sims
We can't say that because one, there's not enough robust evidence for a whole human to be able to do that. It's too generalizable because we don't know when someone ovulates. Every woman's cycle is very variations of when they ovulate. So it's more. We know you roughly have X amount of days in your cycle, see how you feel and you can tweak your training accordingly because if you know on day 23 you always feel really shitty, then you're not going to go do a hard session. So when you have reproductive years, that's what you do. So when you start getting into your mid to late 30s and you start seeing these inherent changes, it's kind of an awareness factor of, whoa, what's going on? So people start to feel a little bit less strong, they start to feel a little bit less like themselves and they're starting to go, what's going on? Like, am I not training? Right. And unfortunately with the diet culture, most people say, oh, I need to increase my training and decrease my food because I'm starting to put on belly fat or I'm not responding as well. So they start to really kind of get into more of a low energy state. See this all the time, especially in recreational female athletes. And when we get into a low energy state, that means that we don't have enough food coming in to support daily life as well as support training. So then, then we Get a compounding variable of now they're going to put on more body fat and have more issues sleeping and definitely not recover well. So it becomes a negative feedback system and that becomes the worry. So then when they get into their 40s and really start to have issues, that plus the sympathetic drive of perimenopause causes a complexity of issues that then they go to their physician and the physician is like, hmm, okay, maybe it's because you're in this period of your life where you're highly stressed, you're not taking care of yourself. Do you exercise? Exercise? Yeah, I exercise, keep doing it. But they don't realize that the exercise that they're doing isn't appropriate for their bodies when it's going through this phase.
- [33:15]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So what should they be doing in that phase?
- [33:17]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. So when we look from a sex difference, not a sex hormone standpoint, women are already super, super endurant by the nature of being xx. So the long slow zone 2 stuff is not something they need to do all the time. We look at, we need to now find an external stress that's going to create a signal in the body that's going to cause responses the same as estrogen progesterone used to do. So what I mean by that is we need to have really super high intensity work and resistance training because we want to signal to the body with high intensity work that we can use glucose effectively, kind of like sprinting.
- [33:55]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that's what they call high intensity
- [33:58]
Dr. Stacy Sims
because it causes what we call epigenetic change. So we know that it's a locking key. So high intensity work is the key to unlock the cell, to open them up to allow glucose to come in without insulin. So it's a GLUT4 protein that translocates, opens up and we see that insulin isn't needed for glucose to come.
- [34:15]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I just want to stop you there because this is such an important point you're talking about and most people don't understand it. People think that in order to get your blood sugar glucose into your cells, you need insulin. But the muscle is a unique tissue and can actually absorb glucose without insulin.
- [34:31]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Insulin, right, yes, exactly. Especially in the post exercise state. Because now.
- [34:36]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that's right. And the way you get that is by having healthy, good muscle.
- [34:39]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right, exactly right. So I mean, one of the things that diabetics do is like a 10 minute walk after a meal because it helps stabilize blood glucose. And that's what you can do when you do high intensity. You get a permanent change in the muscle to have the ability to have more GLUT4 proteins translocate to improve insulin, insulin sensitivity. Because now you have other ways of getting glucose in without so much reliance on insulin. So it makes the body more sensitive to the insulin.
- [35:07]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So it's a double benefit. You get insulin independent uptake of sugar or glucose in your muscles. And you don't have to make as much insulin in order to drive the glucose into the cells. And when you don't have to make as much insulin, that's a good thing because insulin is the fat storage hormone and makes you store belly fat, which you were talking about.
- [35:26]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right. So it's, you know, like convoluted.
- [35:29]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's a lot to unpack. I just want. Because then everybody's a doctor or Ph.D. like you or me. Like, I just think unpack it.
- [35:34]
Dr. Stacy Sims
It's good.
- [35:35]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm just helping out here.
- [35:36]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. That's your job. And then the other thing about high intensity work is if we go back to brain and brain metabolism, we really do see a change in glucose reliance of brain fuel and tissue because it's not as effective in the brain when we start to get in perimenopause. And we see that that change in brain metabolism is also a risk factor for amyloid and tau plaques or, you know, our Alzheimer's plaques. So if we're doing high intensity and producing lactate, lactate is a preferred fuel for the brain and the heart. So if your body's exposed to lactate, it starts to use lactate and not having such a reliance on glucose, which improves brain metabolism and again reduces the risk factor for developing tau and amyloid plaque.
- [36:22]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So, so just people, what is that? Amyloid tau. That's basically the, the sticky protein that cause dementia and Alzheimer's. That's, that's, you know, that's what we know is, is the downstream effect of whatever the insult is. It's not that amyloid causes Alzheimer's. It's that it's the result of some inflammatory or unhealthy process in the brain. And it's kind of the body's band aid. But. But what you're saying is the right type of exercise will actually attenuate it, prevent that the development of these like, plaques and tangles in the brain.
- [36:55]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I wouldn't use so much prevention, slows the rate if you have a risk for it. So you could actually have a few, but not develop symptoms. There are a lot of people who have a variation of amyloid and tau plaques that don't have dementia Symptoms, which is what we're after. Like you could have them as long as you don't have symptoms. Right. So we're looking at ways to improve brain metabolism, reduce inflammation. So if we are producing lactate, then we're doing high intensity work. That's great metabolism for the brain. Brain. But also when you do high intensity, you get a really strong post exercise anti inflammatory response. Because the cells have been inflamed from such high intensity work and the body's reading it as a signal of oh gosh, we have to be able to rebuild quickly in case that stress comes back. So it, it increases antioxidation and increases anti inflammatory responses. We see a boost of growth hormone, we see a boost of testosterone post exercise. So when we hear all the stuff how a perimenopausal woman shouldn't do high intensity work, it's like, hold on, let's define high intensity because it's very beneficial if you do it correctly. But if you're doing a high intensity class, that is at all these gyms where they're like, let's go after the perimenopausal women and we have these booty burns, we have spin, we have Orange theory, we have F45. All of those.
- [38:07]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I know, I've been there.
- [38:09]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's moderate intensity. It's not truly high intensity because we've all been conditioned to get out of one of those classes feeling sweaty and completely smashed, thinking it was a good workout. But for true high intensity, you can't hold the intensity for as long as these classes.
- [38:24]
Dr. Mark Hyman
No. You can only do it for 30 to seconds to a minute. Right?
- [38:27]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. So that's the sprint and when we look at the Norwegian four by four, that's also a type of intensity. Right. So four minutes at about 80% and those four minutes are super slow. You're like, oh my God, hurry up. I can do it, I can do it. And then the 4 minutes recovery go too fast.
- [38:42]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I wanna loop back on something you said. Cause it's also so important, you kind of said that the effect of, of the exercise and the post exercise effect is to reduce inflammation in the brain. And there's, I don't know if you know, the work of R. Tanzi and others who really looked at the subtype of the population with some weird genetic variant where they have a brain full of amyloid and full of tangles and plaque and tau, but they have normal cognition and they have a weird mutation that prevents inflammation, which is really wild.
- [39:17]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [39:18]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So without inflammation, bottom Line. Alzheimer's is an inflammation disease of the brain. So is heart disease. Inflammation of the blood vessels. That's kind of what causes it.
- [39:28]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right, right. So we look at all the ways that we can reduce inflammation. I mean, that's why estrogen or estradiol internally is so protective, because it's an anti inflammatory agent. So when we start losing it and the body becomes more inflamed and systemically driven and we see that we have more of the sympathetic drive that is also that, that hype at people feel tired but wired, it drives even more inflammation. Let's look at how we can reduce that. People are like, oh, high intensity, I can't do that, it's going to make me more tired. But they do it properly and like, oh, I feel amazing. I have this kind of what is doing it properly? So we have high intensity interval training and the subset of that is our sprint interval training. So we look at high intensity interval training. This is about 80% of your max when you're doing the intervals. So it could be one minute on, one minute off. And that one minute on is, is eight out of a one to ten. When you're looking at ten being max and one being you're sitting on the couch. And then that one minute off is just really super cruisy so that you can do the next one minute at that 80% or that's kind of how you start. And then ideally we're holding it for three to four minutes and then you have variable recovery, however fit you are. Because if we can hold it for three to four minutes, what do you
- [40:36]
Dr. Mark Hyman
do like four times, like a minute, one minute off, one minute on, like twice, that's four minutes.
- [40:42]
Dr. Stacy Sims
No. So if we're doing one minute on, one minute off, we try to build that up to total of 10 to 15 minutes. So you end up doing five to seven sets of the one minute on. And then if we're looking at producing more lactate, then we do longer intervals with a shorter recovery as you get more tolerance to it. So this could be three to four minutes at 80% and two to four minutes recovery, depending on how you're feeling and how fit you're getting. So the other way to think about it is in the class situation, especially something like CrossFit or some of these other classes where they have every minute on the minute, or you have one minute that you might be doing burpees and then right into the next minute you're doing walking lunges with a weight and then the third minute you might Be doing box jumps and then the fourth minute recovery. Right. The recovery is switching from minute to minute until the very last minute is a full minute off. So you have four minutes of hard work, one minute off, and then you can repeat that a couple of times. That's true high intensity. And then the sprint interval is very short and effective. So this is your subset of high intensity, where it's 20 to 30 seconds as hard as you possibly can go.
- [41:46]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Like you're running from a tiger.
- [41:48]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, exactly. Or a shark if you're in the ocean.
- [41:50]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
- [41:51]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And then it's a full two to three minutes recovery. And I have a lot of women go, why do I need to recover that long? It's like, because if you don't recover that long, your central nervous system and your energy systems have not recovered enough to then be able to do that same intensity at that running from a tiger speed that you need to do. Because if you are consistently doing 30 seconds and then a minute off, 30 seconds, a minute off, you are failing to hit that high intensity.
- [42:17]
Dr. Mark Hyman
How do you. How do you. How many times you do that?
- [42:19]
Dr. Stacy Sims
No more than five. You work your way up. Some people are like, oh, no problem. I'm gonna do five. And after two, they're like, oh, my God, I can't do anymore.
- [42:26]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So like a minute and then four minutes off, and then another minute and doing that five times.
- [42:30]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Uh, yeah. And then if you are doing a separate session of sprint interval training. Training. Because they're two different sessions. So you can have a high intensity interval training as one session. And then when you're short on time or you want more of your epigenetic change for glucose, then you're looking at doing the sprint interval stuff. That's a completely separate session. Might take 10 minutes total, or you have a warmup, you do two to three sets of the 30 seconds on, two to three minutes off, and you're done.
- [42:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay, so that's the cardio part.
- [42:59]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [43:00]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And that you're saying when we just start. When in their 30s, you could start
- [43:04]
Dr. Stacy Sims
it earlier, but it's really beneficial when you start getting in your late 30s,
- [43:08]
Dr. Mark Hyman
early 40s, and continue out through your life.
- [43:10]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, yeah.
- [43:11]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Obviously, your speeds are gonna reduce, but not that much. Not that much.
- [43:15]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right.
- [43:15]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
- [43:15]
And that's what interesting research is like. Most of us have this belief that as you get older, you decline and become more frail and slower and so forth. But I remember reading this book, I think it was a Deepak Chopra book, like maybe 30 years or more ago, where he talked about The Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, where they had a belief in the culture that the runners, because they would run long distances, a hundred miles, that the third 20 year olds are good, 30 are better, 40 better. And the 60 year olds are the best runners.
- [43:44]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I love that.
- [43:44]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And they actually were. And then they went down. There's a group from Harvard went down and study their VO2 max and their pulmonary fitness and their credit. And they actually were better. And I think we've seen, we've seen this in, you know, these isolated people who were like, I started, you know, at 65 rowing or I started biking at, you know, 65 and I'm now 105 and I'm like, I'm better.
- [44:05]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [44:05]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And it's like, so the body is quite amazing that we think it is going to fail, but actually it can continue if you continue to take care of it.
- [44:14]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right.
- [44:14]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I remember meeting this guy, it was my, my stepfather's Shiva, which is like the, after the funeral. And he was 95 years old and he was like running around like a spring chicken. And I'm like, he looks so fit and sharp. And I'm like, what are you doing?
- [44:28]
He says, well, whatever I did yesterday, I do today.
- [44:30]
If I did singles tennis yesterday, I do single tennis today. And I'm like, that was a great lesson for me.
- [44:36]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I love that. Yeah, yeah.
- [44:38]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. So that's the cardio part.
- [44:40]
What about the strength part? And how do women think about that?
- [44:43]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So strength training is scary for a lot of women, especially in this age group, because we didn't really grow up with being gym. Right. It hasn't been kosher for women to have muscles or to be in the gym doing strength.
- [44:55]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Chain Fonda aerobics.
- [44:57]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:58]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Who's actually here at this conference they're both speaking at.
- [45:01]
For years, my diet and my fitness were pretty dialed in. And yet I still felt like something was missing, especially during the darker months. And light was the variable I struggled to get right. And korus, the makers of oyo, have spent years and millions in research and development to solve this. They didn't just build a light bulb. They figured out how to bring the sun into indoors. Backed by more than 530 patents in Nobel level science, Oyo by Chorus removes stimulating blue wavelengths at night so your body can do what it was designed to do. Rest and recover. And when your circadian rhythm resets, everything improves. Your sleep deepens, your energy sharpens, even your immune system responds. I've seen what happens when people fix their light. They don't just sleep better, they feel clearer, more grounded, and more alive. If you're making one change this year that touches every everything, start with your light. Learn more@chorus.com Dr. And enjoy 15% off their newest product Oyo Sphere with the code HYMAN SPHERE15 that's K-O-R-R-U-S.com Sphere and use the code HYMAN SPHERE15 people often assume I love cooking because I'm a doctor and focused on food is medicine. But the truth is I love cooking because it's creative, it's grounding, and it connects you to what you're eating.
- [46:10]
Eating.
- [46:11]
In fact, last night I cooked one of my favorite recipes, our Mediterranean Lemon Chicken Soup. It's simple, nourishing, and it's built around whole anti inflammatory ingredients. Nothing complicated, just real food prepared well. Cooking isn't about talent, it's about confidence. And confidence comes from having the tools that actually work. And that's why I use Made In Cookware. The heat distribution is incredibly even. Whether I'm sauteing aromatics for soup or simmering broth, Made in creates professional quality Chef trusted cook cookware that's designed for the home cook. It makes the process seamless. And when your cookware performs well, you're not worrying about hot spots or uneven cooking. You're focused on flavor and nourishment. Try it today. Visit madeincookware.com and use the code HYMAN10 for 10% off your order.
- [46:54]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Wait till you I get to interview her tomorrow and I'm going to dig into that. It's a very interesting way it came about but oh, I won't tell everyone on the podcast. Okay, so when you think about strength training and because people have been so conditioned to walking around with their pink dumbbells and thinking that strength training, it's hard to get women to understand that that's not what we mean by strength training.
- [47:15]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And yes, pink five Penda mammals.
- [47:17]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know the ones on the back of the peloton where you're trying to ride at the same time. No, that's metabolic cardiovascular work. And when we look at strength training, gym intimidation is real. Sometimes I get gym intimidation when I go to a new place. It's very real.
- [47:32]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I know I go to the gym and I have my own little workout thing house and I was in Venice, California and I went to Gold's Gym and it's like, oh my God. Like it's like Arnold Schwarzenegger Muscle Beach. Like, everybody's like humongous and probably on so many anabolic steroids. Like videos of Arnold flexing in his prime on the video screens going. While you're trying to. I'm like. And I'm, you know, I'm fairly muscular, but I'm 66 and I'm like looking at myself like I feel like a 98 pound weakling here. You know, I was like, I need to leave. No, no. But I, I stayed. I go at six in morning and just gotta do it.
- [48:09]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I'm trying to do it. Yeah. I like try to find off hours, but then that's not even great because then everyone's looking at you, you're like, what are you doing on the lifting platform? But yeah, because gym intimidation is real. I don't want to like tell every woman you have to go to the gym. So we start with wherever they are in their journey. It could be you 10 minutes a week where you wake up and you do a body weight circuit, right? And then as you get stronger in your body weights, you put a front pack of a backpack on, not back, because if you're doing a squat, you don't want to lean forward. So if you put weight in a front pack, then it teaches you how to squ, squat upright and use your glutes. So there's ways of like improving your technique while adding load. And then we know that isolation is killer. So if you have a friend who's also interested. Well, there's lots of apps out there that are really powerful in getting women connected and actually have proper programming to improve from going body weight and lightweight to dumbbells to lifting a bar. So there's different ways of doing it. If you want to join a CrossFit gym, that's great because they'll teach you stuff. If you want to join a proper gym with a personal trainer, that's fine too. But I think the mistake that people have is not having a plan and relying on other people to tell them what to do. We need a periodized plan wherever you are in your journey. So if you're just starting with body weight, let's look at what that first six to 12 weeks is so that we can progressively overload you and get you comfortable in those movements and then we can add some load. If you are resistance trained, it's really hard to get gains. So how are you going to change up what you're doing so you can keep getting gains if you're somewhere in the middle and you're used to doing 8 to 10 reps? Well, don't change your program per se but let's add more weight and reduce the reps so it's looking. I can't give it to you.
- [49:52]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Do you need a trainer to do
- [49:54]
this or how do you kind of. How do you get started?
- [49:57]
It's like, I'm like, you know, I mean, honestly, I was so into it, I had to get a trainer because I didn't want to hurt myself. I was scared and I didn't want to just do something stupid.
- [50:04]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, that's very real. A lot of women are very afraid of getting hurt. That's why they don't go and do heavier weights. I work with a few people that have really fantastic apps we've written together. And so the program is designed that way so that you can go into the gym with the app, see the videos, get instructions to understand how to do it. With video cueing, you can. Like in New Zealand we have playgrounds that have like tires that you can do tire flips with your friends. We have outdoor classes. So people are there to tell you what to do. It's really finding your community that's gonna help you. And part of it also leans into. Isolation is a killer and a demotivator.
- [50:42]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, not isolating muscles, but social isolation.
- [50:45]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Social isolation? Yeah. Social isolation is a killer of motivation. And we know that it's not very good for anybody. So if you have a buddy, it makes it fun, it makes it sustainable, and then you have ownership in what you. You're doing.
- [51:01]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's amazing. Okay, so I think, is there anything
- [51:03]
else we want to share about strength
- [51:05]
training or fitness training before we jump to nutrition?
- [51:08]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Just get started. For a lot of people in our society, like I was asked the other day about why do I have to do all the stuff that you're talking about? When we see all these people who are 100 and they never did any of that stuff. Right, right.
- [51:22]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, they, they lived in a way where they had to do this stuff.
- [51:25]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly. So I brought up the example of my grandmother who lived to be 100, and she grew up on a farm. And then she moved into the city with my grandfather. He had his own business. She was running around doing the gardening, the house cleaning, looking after her mother in law, like always busy lifting, moving, that kind of stuff. And that was the lifestyle of the people who are now in their 90s and hundreds. But our lifestyle now is not like that.
- [51:48]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. My book, Young Forever, I did some research and I went to Ikaria, or Ikaria, you say it in Greece. It's one of the blue zones.
- [51:55]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [51:55]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I met this couple, he was like 97, she was like 87. And they live on the side of this sort of hill mountain. And she had like the most extensive, like, I wouldn't call it a garden.
- [52:10]
It was a farm.
- [52:10]
There were fruit trees, there was animals, There was like so much food she was growing and they. And she was like walking up and
- [52:18]
I couldn't keep up with her.
- [52:19]
She was 87 years old and, you know, showing me what she was doing and having to lift stuff and move stuff and take care of the whole thing. And I was like, wow.
- [52:26]
Dr. Stacy Sims
You know, and if that happened in, in our country, people would be like, oh, wait, wait, no, don't lift that. I'll get that for you. Right, right. Because we're so con. There's an editorial that came out a couple of weeks ago that was talking specifically to healthcare providers and to pts that we need to stop the rhetoric of old is frail. We need to stop pushing the 10 to 20 rep range of strength training. We need to really look at challenging the body because it can handle it.
- [52:50]
Dr. Mark Hyman
We know, but you have to be careful. Your tendons and ligaments, if you, you. Cause you're, you can if you're not slowly building. Building up.
- [52:57]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right, exactly.
- [52:58]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I noticed that for myself when I started. I kind of overdid it because my muscles could do it, but my tendons weren't ready. So then now I can do like, you know, double the weights.
- [53:05]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right.
- [53:06]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But I don't have the pain.
- [53:07]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly. So that's part of the whole periodized program. Right.
- [53:10]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But if you periodize means just like phases of training, like over time, like doing different things in different weeks, like a graded increase in strength training.
- [53:18]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right. So you don't get bored. And two, you keep increasing load with. Without getting injured and your body recovers properly. And.
- [53:26]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And are there good resources for people
- [53:28]
like that want to.
- [53:29]
Dr. Stacy Sims
That wanna jump in on this?
- [53:30]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
- [53:31]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So there's a woman called the Betty Rocker and she's really good if you wanna get started with body weight stuff. And she has some really good perimenopausal menopausal programs. If you're looking to like get into lifting. Vonda Wright has a program with Haley that's learn to lift. And then if you're already lifting and really wanting to optimize, then you can go into Haley's power Happens. I helped her devise and write.
- [53:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Great. We'll put all those in the show. Notes, links and everything.
- [54:01]
Let's talk about nutrition.
- [54:02]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [54:03]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Because I think people are confused and there's all this sort of hype about protein. There's intermittent fasting, there's. Do we eat before exercise? Only after exercise. What should people be thinking about and how do we start to think about that?
- [54:19]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, I always pull it back now to help kind of clear up all the confusion of chronobiology. So what are we doing for our circadian rhythm? And we know that women's circadian rhythm is different from men's. So if we're looking at even our cortisol peak, our cortisol awakening response, so that's how our cortisol comes up. Women have a higher peak than men and it's tightly tied to appetite hormone. So we know that when cortisol in the morning comes up, we also have an increase in what we call acylated ghrelin, which is our active form of our hunger hormone. We also have an increase in equivalent rise in peptide yy, which is a satiation hormone. But if we don't eat within an hour of waking up, there's dysregulation of those hormones. So as we go through the day, we start to feel more cravings for simple carbohydrates. We get what I call the walling because we don't move as much incidentally throughout the day. Start really feeling tired and hangry about four or five. No matter if you've eaten a little bit later in the day and then dinner is a little bit uncontrollable, where you're like snacking before dinner and then you have dinner and then an hour later you feel hungry so you're eating something before bed and you've effectively phase shift because you're eating in the wrong times. So regardless of the intermittent fasting, the keto, whatever it is, let's first go back to basics. Let's look how the body optimizes hormone pulse, how it optimizes melatonin peak to sleep well, how it optimizes how it repairs itself. It's all in the circadian rhythm. So if we eat during the day and try to front load our calories more towards the beginning and middle of the day, then when we get to the evening, we're not as starving so we can make wiser choices at dinner. And then we aren't wanting to have snacks after dinner, which then improves sleep. So I tell women if you're having really horrible sleep and issues sleeping, it starts in the morning like when you wake up and if you have food within the first hour or not. So we want to drop that cortisol, we Want to stimulate the hypothalamus to say, yep, there's some food coming in so we can have some more control of ghrelin and leptin so that it pulses properly throughout the day and then your body's able to have more of an even blood sugar throughout the day.
- [56:36]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I think that's important. And when I think about intermittent fasting, I think for women it can be challenging because of the reason that you're saying I like to think about it on the back end. I like to think about it as not eating after dinner.
- [56:49]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right.
- [56:50]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So if you eat dinner at 6 and you wake up at 7 and you eat at 8, that's a 14 hour fast.
- [56:59]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly.
- [56:59]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So that's necessary. We want to have at least a
- [57:03]
12 hour break in our bodies to
- [57:06]
allow our bodies to repair, heal and do autophagy and all the cleanup stuff. But it doesn't have to be this 16 hour thing. It doesn't have to be like waiting till noon to eat. I mean that's about idea for what.
- [57:14]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Have you seen the research about early versus late fast break? So there's been some population research looking that for those individuals, both in women and men, but more robust responses in women who break their fast by 8 in the morning and then they finish their daily intake by 5pm that they do have metabolic control. And all the things that you think
- [57:36]
Dr. Mark Hyman
about, it's just my first book was called Ultra Metabolism and I wrote a chapter there called the Sumo Wrestling Muscular Diet. And the joke was how do you have small little Japanese men become these enormous 300 plus pound guys? Well, they have a science in how they do that. They basically feed in this massive food called chankonabe, which is a giant stew of all kinds of rice and pork and this and that. It's not processed food, but it's a lot of food. And then they make them quotations, a nap, and then they do the same thing at the end of the day for dinner and then they make them go to sleep. So basically if you eat before you go to sleep, it's all going to store and you're not going to burn it. And so think of, I would sort of flip the intermittent fasting to be on the back end like on the the night before and not eating and snacking at night. So that's the best way to do that is to front load your food so you're not starving at the end of the day.
- [58:33]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right. And so I explained the difference between intermittent fasting and time restricted eating. What you and I are talking about is technically time restricted. E eating. Because when you start talking about intermittent fasting, that's when people are like, oh, I'm not going to eat till 11 or 12, and then I'm only going to eat till 4 or 5 in that window 1. You're not going to get the micronutrients you need or the fiber that you need. You get a whole bunch of dysregulation. So let's just not even go there.
- [58:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. This is a great take home for people. So if you're a woman and probably I would say anybody you want to front load your calorie restriction, which is after dinner, and don't eat after dinner and have an earlier dinner if you can, you're gonna sleep better, you're gonna feel better, your metabolism will be better, you're gonna probably lose more weight, you're gonna have a better time and you're gonna feel better.
- [59:19]
Now let's talk about protein.
- [59:20]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yes.
- [59:21]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So protein is the thing. It used to be low fat, then it was low carb, then it was high fiber. Now it's like high protein. Like, what's the deal?
- [59:30]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know.
- [59:30]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I think we're running out of things to be high or low in.
- [59:33]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know. I'm wondering what the next thing's gonna be. Initially, I was really happy that protein was getting its heyday because it has been under underutilized.
- [59:42]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's the only. By the way, it's the only macronutrient that we need in large amounts.
- [59:46]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly.
- [59:47]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Like fat. Essential fatty acids. We need in small amounts, like gram amounts, like maybe in milligram amounts. Carbohydrates. We have no actual essential carbohydrates, but protein, we. We have a requirement for a fairly large amount of amino acids and carbohydrate and protein every day.
- [60:06]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right. And I always start protein conversations with reminding people that the R is a representation of the lowest amount of protein that you need to prevent malnutrition.
- [60:15]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yes.
- [60:15]
Dr. Stacy Sims
It is not optimal. And if we are looking for optimal, we have to dig into the most recent research that shows that between 1.6 and 2 grams per kilogram of body weight is ideal. So that is about that 0.8 to 1 gram per pound per day.
- [60:30]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So if you're 150 pounds, it's 150 grams or maybe 130 or 120. 150 grams of protein.
- [60:36]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And then as you get older, you become more anabolically resistant, meaning that you can't build tissue and use it very well to protein and resistance training. So if we are going to try to build strength and lean mass, we have to be on the upper end of protein. And the timing of that is very important.
- [60:53]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
- [60:54]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So when I just listened to this fantastic lecture, can you stop?
- [60:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Because people just heard anabolic resistance. They probably know what that means. Basically, when you're young, you have what we call trophic hormones. You have a lot of hormones that are helping you keep and build muscle. When you get older, they change and your muscles change and you need more protein and more strength training just to tread water.
- [61:15]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Right. I often say I'm a living example because every time I travel out of the country and I'm gone for a month or so, I lose about three kilos of muscle.
- [61:23]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I know it's a pain in the
- [61:24]
Dr. Stacy Sims
ass and it's really hard to get back.
- [61:26]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I know. I went to the gym this morning. I try to get to the gym every day when I'm traveling, but sometimes I can't and I don't have my
- [61:32]
blender and I can't do my whey
- [61:33]
protein smoothies and I can't. Like, I'm like, okay, I have two eggs but I need like six eggs.
- [61:37]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I'm like, like, you go down to the breakfast bar, you're like, all the eggs in your bag, you're like, I didn't take them off. Yeah, it's really hard. And so when people push back on the protein and the strength training, I'm like, it is really, really difficult when you get into your 40s and beyond as a woman and in your 50s and beyond as a man to build and maintain your lean mass. And lean mass isn't just muscle, it's also bone. We know protein's really important for bone as well. And when we look at the stimulus sport, not a lot of the education out there is for the right stimulus to build bone and maintain muscle. So if we're looking at strength training, we know the rep ranges and everything for strength training and for bone, it's not walking. Yes, strength training can help, but we need to do hard landing jump training. So we need that multi directional ground reactive force to go up through the whole skeleton to actually stimulate bone growth and density. So when we're looking at protein is necessary to help with that too. So as we get older, we need to err on the upper side. And like I was saying, I listened to this fantastic lecture by Keith Barr, who is tendon and protein guy, molecular researcher out of California, and he was saying, yeah, this whole conversation about post exercise eating is really interesting because Most of it's been done on young men and some young women. And so there really isn't a window. I was like, yeah, of course. But as you get older, your is
- [62:58]
Dr. Mark Hyman
more important happen when one or two hours after you work out, he says even less.
- [63:03]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Less if you are thinking about what you're trying to drive. When you're exercising, you're driving signals to break tissue down and the post exercise response is to help repair that. To repair, you need nutrition. So if you're delaying that, then you're kind of muting those signals for reparation. So he really suggests that as you get older, in your mid-40s for women and mid-50s for men, that you really try to get nutrition is close to the end of exercise.
- [63:33]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Interesting.
- [63:34]
Let me ask you this, because it's something I just don't know. I mean, I've talked to Don Layman, who's a protein expert.
- [63:38]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [63:38]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And my understanding was if you are well trained, like if you're starting out, for sure that's true. If you're well trained and you do resistance training regularly, you have muscle that it doesn't matter so much as to the timing. But what you're saying is different.
- [63:52]
Dr. Stacy Sims
It is different. Yeah. And so when we're looking at all the studies that are promoting, there's no real difference. And we're looking at resistance training and resistance trained individuals, and you could have 100 grams of protein, and that doesn't matter when you have it, as long as you have it throughout the day. Because Luke Van Loon put out one where it was the barbecue diet where he loaded people up with a hundred grams of protein post exercise and you were still having protein uptake for 24 hours after. Again, all done on men, younger men. So when we're really looking at the aging factor of muscle and tendon, we want to use exercise as a signal and we need nutrition to help with that signaling. So that's the angle that a lot of us in this field are like. We're not looking at younger people who have the ability to repair without necessarily having a big wallop of food afterwards. We're looking at how do we optimize women and men who are aging and still putting in the effort and the work that if you're not fueling to help with those exercise signals, then you're reducing the response.
- [64:55]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So bottom line is like, if you're older and getting older, 40, 50, 60s, whatever, when you strength train, make sure you have something within half an hour to an hour at the most.
- [65:03]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, right.
- [65:04]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Like a whey protein shake or a piece of chicken or six eggs or some, some amount that's going to be a. And the amount, does the amount matter that time? Is it 30, 40, 50 grams? Because you can't eat, you can't eat a, a pound, a gram per pound of protein in one meal, right?
- [65:16]
Dr. Stacy Sims
No, no, I wouldn't recommend that. We see that for older women it's 35 to 40 grams and for older men it's 25 to 30. 30 grams more for women? Yeah, because we have more of a anabolic resistance to the protein. Abby Smith Ryan did some really interesting work of pre and post exercise and she found that for women who had 10 to 15 grams of protein before exercise, you still had the capability of accelerating the post exercise signals because you had more amino acids circulating. So if you know that you can't eat after exercise, if you have it beforehand, it's, it still helps.
- [65:53]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And so let's talk about the beforehand because should you exercise fasted or fed and if you are fed, how much? Because I know I can't really eat too much for exercise. I get sluggish and nauseous and I can't do it. So tell me about that.
- [66:07]
Dr. Stacy Sims
It's okay for you, but not so great for women. Women should have something before. And when we look at the reason, we look at like energy availability. So we know that men can pretty much get it as low as 15 calories per kg of body weight without having dysfunction. For women it is 35. So there's a big discrepancy right there. So we look at every eating opportunity. We know that if women have something before exercise that they improve the signaling of the post exercise responses because they aren't producing as much of the breakdown hormones, your catecholamines that help with muscle contraction and fuel and stuff. So your body, I wouldn't say is more relaxed, but it's not as highly stressed during exercise. So it can hit intensity as it needs to, it can do what it needs to do. It can increase the signaling for post exercise responses, especially if it's cardiovascular. If it's strength training, there's a little bit more of a leeway because it's not as metabolically heavy as cardiovascular training. But if you're gonna do a weight training circuit, then you do need to eat.
- [67:12]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah, I mean, I do a circuit, I'm like going, my heart rate's up like 40. Yeah. Wow.
- [67:18]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And I tell people it's not a lot. You don't have to think about having a Full meal. I mean, there's a lot of us that are part of the 5am Club. And the last thing in the world you want to do is get up at 3:30 to have a full meal before you go training at 5:30. Like, no. It's like, I am infamous, you know, on the Internet about protein coffee, right? So I love coffee, and I'm not
- [67:38]
Dr. Mark Hyman
going to not have what's a protein coffee.
- [67:39]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know. So I. People always ask me what I had. I'm like, I do a double espresso at night and I put it in the fridge. But I put it in the fridge with almond milk and a scoop of protein and I stir it up. And then that's my latte in the morning, and I'm drinking it as I'm going out the door to the gym or to the pool.
- [67:54]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So you put like, whey protein in your almond milk? Almond milk.
- [67:57]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And then I pour the espresso in. So it's like a cold protein latte first thing in the morning.
- [68:02]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh, interesting.
- [68:04]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Don't ever try to do it hot because the protein gets all gluggy.
- [68:06]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh, so it's like a. It's like a iced coffee.
- [68:09]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [68:09]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. Okay. That's a noose to use.
- [68:12]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And then when you're traveling, traveling, it's easy, right? Because you might have a coffee maker in your room, or maybe you can get a coffee and put your protein powder in. And then you're like, okay, good to go. And then you have your real breakfast when you get home.
- [68:22]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Or you travel with protein powder.
- [68:24]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I do.
- [68:25]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I knew it.
- [68:26]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I travel with protein powder and creatine. And then I order groceries to get sent to the hotel or wherever I'm staying.
- [68:33]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I got meat sticks. I got the Mountaineer meat sticks in my bag. Oh, yeah, I have creatine.
- [68:37]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [68:38]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And I'm like, it's tough though, man.
- [68:39]
Dr. Stacy Sims
It is very tough.
- [68:40]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I have to like. And then my suitcase is heavy because I get this little portable blender sometimes I get.
- [68:44]
Dr. Stacy Sims
It's like I chew. Choose blender or French press. And I always bring the French press.
- [68:49]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So what are the nutrition mistakes that women are making mostly now?
- [68:52]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And they're listening to all the fad diets and they're listening to the rhetoric that's on social media, and they're not really paying attention to, okay, who am I? How do I respond? When am I hungry? I've retrained women so many, so many women to listen to hunger cues because we've been conditioned not to. We're like, oh, well, I've been told that if I delay food, it's good for me. I should have lemon water, hot lemon water. When I first wake up, I shouldn't have coffee, I should delay my breakfast. And then they get into the whole circadian disruption and they're not sleeping. It's like, okay, well let's reset. Yeah. Because if you aren't eating, we know that, you know, your body really responds to food and day and night to look at controlling your circadian rhythm. So if you're waking up and one, you're not looking at light, two you're not eating, then your body's like, am I supposed to be up? And we see that it effectively phase shifts. So then your melatonin that starts to rise up at 9 o' clock for women and 10 o' clock for men, you miss the boat, you don't get that, you get a blunting of that.
- [69:53]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So women should eat in the morning and not do this lemon water thing and then delay their breakfast.
- [69:58]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Correct. And try to look at the light.
- [70:00]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And by the way, you mentioned people listening to nutritionists on the Internet or in social media. 40% of them are paid by big food companies. I know provide misinformation and to confuse people on purpose.
- [70:12]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Correct. And sell something.
- [70:14]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I know actually criminal.
- [70:15]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And. And sell something to fix it. That's why I, Mike, I don't partner with anybody.
- [70:20]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So what do you think about the protein Cheerios and the Dunkin Donuts and shakes and the Starbucks protein coffees and the.
- [70:25]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know, I laugh because being an expat living overseas, we don't have that. We're really. You go to the grocery store and it's not apple season, you can't buy an apple. Right. It's very seasonal, kind of how it usually is in the San Francisco Bay area. But I come to the States and I go to a Safeway and I'm like, what is this? This is a store full of stuff that isn't food. And you have protein pop tarts, you have protein popcorn, you have all these ultra processed things that have protein, protein, high fiber and it's all additive. And I always remind people that we are not as smart as Mother Nature. So when you are engineering food, that's not the same as if you're eating the whole food because there are co factors in the whole food that actually work in your body to make it work.
- [71:11]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And this is tactic of the food industry called nutritionism, which is a term coined by Michael Pollan about manipulating processed food to meet the latest food trend. Or fat. Right. Whether it's low fat, low carb, high fiber, high protein. So, like, I, I, I kind of want to go see high protein Cheerios. I'm like, give me a break.
- [71:35]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know you're like, how much sugar's in there too?
- [71:37]
Dr. Mark Hyman
They do it very fast. It's amazing how fast they reformulate.
- [71:40]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know.
- [71:40]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Like, wow. You know, and so, so I think, I think people have to be really careful and stick to whole foods and not do all these weird protein kind of fad foods that are out there. Some things are okay. There are some things out there, but you have to be very discerning and read the ingredient list to make sure they're not full of weird things you can't recognize or pronounce or don't have in your kitchen.
- [71:58]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. So in New Zealand, one protein bar is anywhere from five to ten dollars. So it's not really that affordable. And people are like, well, what should I have? Instead of, I was like, why don't you just look at a snicker bar? Because a Snicker bar actually has more protein than these protein bars, and it's a dollar. So it's not like I'm promoting candy bars, but when the comparison, when you're looking, it's like, what are you actually getting when it says a protein on or like protein bar on the label?
- [72:23]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.
- [72:24]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Like, you can't really identify everything in there. It doesn't taste that great. Where is. If you know that you're hungry, you get a payday. Or a snicker bar that has some fat and protein in it. It's a candy bar. You're not gonna have it all the time, but it's gonna probably fill you up better and it gives you protein and it's cheaper.
- [72:40]
Dr. Mark Hyman
A stickers bar.
- [72:42]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know people have pushed back. I'm like, I know desperate times calls for desperate vendors. I'd rather you have almonds and a cheese stick. But if you're really in a gas station and you have the option of a $10 Musashi bar or a $2
- [72:56]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Snicker bar, if you are sort of advising women in the realistic now, which they are a lot of minuses women, and they just need, what would it be?
- [73:06]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I think the very first thing I tell every woman to do is to put some hard meetings in their calendar. That's a wellness meeting with themselves, because we don't know where they are in their journey. But if we have 10 minutes three times a week dedicated to us, we start to find what we really need. So Women who have never started a fitness journey. I tell them, your 10 minutes on your first day is just to turn off, no noise, go outside, look at the light, have your coffee in front of the window, Just really turn, trying to, like, decompress and tune in. And then as you get used to those 10 minutes and you find out, yeah, I really like to stretch or I like to move, or I want to be outside. Then we could tap into that and say, you want to be outside. Okay, well, let's go outside for 10 minutes. Maybe you meet a friend and you do stairs for 10 minutes. Or maybe you're doing a body weight circuit. Is it cold and rainy and you don't want to go outside? You want to stay in front of the cozy fire. Great. Well, let's do a body weight circuit in front of that. Because it's usually your time and it's for you. And what do we need to do for you to keep that wellness meeting? And know that you can't break it because it's the start of these habits that are going to optimize wellness meetings.
- [74:14]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow, what a concept. Wellness meetings. I tell my team, like, if my schedule. I don't care if they're president of the United States, call me. You've got to make sure I have blocks of time where I can do my thing.
- [74:26]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Me too.
- [74:27]
Dr. Mark Hyman
In the morning.
- [74:27]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Me too.
- [74:29]
Dr. Mark Hyman
All right, so let's do some quick fire questions.
- [74:31]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Okay?
- [74:31]
Dr. Mark Hyman
To wrap it up, what's the number one thing women should focus on? For longevity.
- [74:35]
Dr. Stacy Sims
For longevity. So this is really interesting because it's a very big space and lots of, like, information out there for longevity. I tell them to look at what are your risk factors, because there's so many different risks. You can look at family risk factors and know that you have your genetic code, but it doesn't have to dictate what's happening. So if you have a family history of dementia, then we want to focus on. On strength training. You wanna do everything possible so that you don't turn those genes on. If you have a family history of osteoporosis, then we focus on that. So that's the first thing. How are we gonna optimize? Look at family history. Let's work to optimize that your genes
- [75:11]
Dr. Mark Hyman
are predisposing you, but they're not predestined.
- [75:13]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly. And that's the thing. Oh, my father died of a heart attack. So am I. No, no. You know that you're predisposed. So let's do all the things. Cause we have all These tools.
- [75:23]
Dr. Mark Hyman
All right.
- [75:23]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And so that starts you on your longevity.
- [75:25]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay, so what's the biggest mistake women are making in the gym?
- [75:27]
Dr. Stacy Sims
They're following programs that aren't built for
- [75:29]
Dr. Mark Hyman
them or they're not size fits all.
- [75:31]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah. Or they're not following programs. They're just going in and doing a class.
- [75:34]
Dr. Mark Hyman
What's more important, weight loss or muscle gain?
- [75:37]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I'm always about, what are you gaining? Not what you're losing.
- [75:41]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm with you, girl. I mean, I've been a doctor who's helped people lose hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions. I never tell people to lose weight. I never focus on weight loss. I say, let's get healthy. And here's how. And the weight loss is a side effect. Coming days a week, should women be training in the gym?
- [75:58]
Dr. Stacy Sims
We see to maintain it's one to two. If you're strength training to kind of get gains and keep moving forward, it's three.
- [76:05]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Is it bad to do four or five or six?
- [76:07]
Dr. Stacy Sims
The worry is over training or under recovery if you are doing that. Because if we don't have a right plan, you can do four or five or six. If it's planned out and you recover well.
- [76:18]
Dr. Mark Hyman
But this is different muscle groups. So you're not doing the same thing every day.
- [76:21]
Dr. Stacy Sims
And eat, please eat. You need abundance. You need abundance to build muscle.
- [76:27]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's counterintuitive. Like, you need to eat a lot in order to lose weight.
- [76:30]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know, but I love it because people are like, what? What about this calorie deficit? And calories in, calories out?
- [76:36]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm like, that is an old idea. And still everybody believes it.
- [76:39]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I know.
- [76:40]
Dr. Mark Hyman
It's like the earth is flat and it looks flat and it's going to be flat. What's the top tip to lose. Sorry. To prevent muscle loss as you age.
- [76:49]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Protein and fiber at every meal and a focus on strength training.
- [76:53]
Dr. Mark Hyman
How about bone density? What's the most effective way to protect your bones?
- [76:57]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Jump training.
- [76:58]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Jump training. Which is what? Jumping jacks? Burpees?
- [77:01]
Dr. Stacy Sims
No. So there's been some really cool research studies that have come out. One is the lift more study out of Australia. The other is the osteogain stuff out of New Zealand. And it is looking at low landing but landing hard. So it's not landing. How we've all learned to absorb it in our joints. It's not plyometrics.
- [77:18]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I can't do that. I had back surgery.
- [77:19]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah, well, you could do a lift and slam your heels down. So it's not actually jumping.
- [77:25]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Yeah.
- [77:26]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So there's ways of doing. Or like you can look at med ball slams. Right. Because then you're absorbing it, you slam it or you slam it down. And so you're like really getting that isometric kind of.
- [77:36]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Interesting. Interesting. Amazing. Okay, what about creatine for women? Yes, absolutely. And how much?
- [77:41]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Oh, so I love this question because a systematic review came out three days ago and I was reading.
- [77:47]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I can't keep up with you, girl. Three days ago, a month ago, I'm
- [77:50]
Dr. Stacy Sims
like, all right, that's because I'm always reading. It went through all the creatine studies that were not like bodybuilding type. And it said the people that benefit the most from creatine supplementation are women aged 18 to 65. And the lowest dose of 3 to 5 grams is optimal. And then there are variations with that, of course. So if you're looking for cognitive benefits, it can go up a little bit higher. Yeah. And then if you're looking at like fatigue and shift work, it's that 0.38 grams per kilogram, which ends up about 20. So there's different variations within the dosage depending on what you need, but the baseline line is at 3 to 5 grams and takes about three weeks to fully saturate. And then you start getting all the benefits.
- [78:29]
Dr. Mark Hyman
What's the biggest myth in women's health or fitness?
- [78:31]
Dr. Stacy Sims
That we age the same as men and that we should be doing the same.
- [78:36]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And we unpacked that pretty well.
- [78:38]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Yeah.
- [78:38]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And what's one nutrition rule that most women get wrong?
- [78:41]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Oh, there's too many, too many rules.
- [78:44]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Calories in, calories out.
- [78:46]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Let's go with that one. Yeah. Calories in, calories out. Yeah.
- [78:48]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay, what's your favorite pre workout snack?
- [78:52]
Dr. Stacy Sims
My protein garbage.
- [78:54]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And how about post workout meal?
- [78:56]
Dr. Stacy Sims
I always crave my bowl of Greek yogurt, nuts, protein powder, berries, chia seeds and a double espresso.
- [79:06]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Damn.
- [79:07]
So you do the double espresso before and after.
- [79:09]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Oh, yeah. And then I stop.
- [79:11]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay. All right. And we didn't talk about this, but better work on the morning.
- [79:16]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Morning or evening for consistency sake. We see that habits in the morning last longer. When you're looking at time press and you can do it at the end of the day. That's great because it's still getting it in. But we also then have to look at how close to bed it is, because if you're driving your core temperature up, then that can lead to a couple of sleep issues. Unless you know how to drive it down.
- [79:40]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And knowing what you know now what would you tell your 20 year old self?
- [79:45]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Oh my gosh, there's so many things because when I was 20, I was like fully endurance athlete. A little bit of strength training, but just running and cycling and swimming and all of those things. And not eating enough. Full, low energy availability, probably not having your period. Yeah, all this. Got it, lost it, got it, lost it. Stress fractures, all those things. So I would go back and say, look, you don't need to do all this. Let's look at how you're going to train for Ironman and XTERRA. Doing it properly.
- [80:17]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Amazing. Okay, and your website is drstacysims.com yes. With a Y, Stacy. With a Y. Yeah. No E and no E. And where else can people learn about you and your work?
- [80:28]
Dr. Stacy Sims
So socials, of course. The same. Drstacysims.com and then our new company is Collective X, Collective X Health.
- [80:35]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay, give us a, give us a
- [80:37]
Dr. Stacy Sims
one, a rundown on that. So we are going. It's a women's advisor intelligence platform. So we're going after the problem with AI and the rhetoric of regurgitating poor information that's been based on male data. So we have a research arm.
- [80:51]
Dr. Mark Hyman
So we have a patriarchal AI system. And you're trying to fix that.
- [80:54]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Exactly. We're going after the sports.
- [80:57]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Got it.
- [80:57]
Dr. Stacy Sims
To correct the sports outcome. We're looking at the wearables, we're looking at the medical. So we're really going after it. And it's a collective because we're partnering with all the other people who want to do the same thing.
- [81:09]
Dr. Mark Hyman
Amazing. Well, Stacy, you're just a wealth of information. I learned so much and I, I'm in this field. So you're, you're. I'm like just kind of leaving with all kinds of news to use and nuggets and wisdom. So thank you so much. Yeah, I'm going to try your protein coffee.
- [81:24]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Awesome.
- [81:25]
Dr. Mark Hyman
I love it.
- [81:26]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Thanks.
- [81:26]
Dr. Mark Hyman
And, and good luck with everything you're doing.
- [81:28]
Dr. Stacy Sims
Thank you so much. It's been great.
- [81:30]
Podcast Host / Announcer
If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center.
- [81:58]
Dr. Mark Hyman
My work is at Cleveland Clinic and
- [81:59]
Podcast Host / Announcer
Function Health where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services.
- [82:21]
Dr. Mark Hyman
If you're looking for help in your
- [82:22]
Podcast Host / Announcer
journey, please seek out a qualified medical medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public, so I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.