# Exercise Expert: Dr Stacy Sims On The Best Way to Train, Eat & Age Well (Project 100)

An episode of [Straight Talk with Mark Bouris](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1572546872), 15 Jul 2026, 1 h 04 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/1c4759f0-81fc-4f35-85d1-b305004fc1e8/8abad17a-7ac6-42b7-a684-b47f003f48db/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=573776d2-4dbd-4f2f-a825-b305004fc1ef

Dr Stacy Sims is one of the world's leading exercise physiologists specialising in women's health, and she joins Project 100 to explain why the science women have been given is largely based on male data and what that means for how women should actually train, eat, and protect their healthspan. From the cellular differences between the sexes, to perimenopause, creatine, protein timing, Alzheimer's risk, and why sleep beats everything else. This is a conversation every woman (and the people who love them) need to hear. Subscribe to the Mentored newsletter here: https://the-mentored-platform-pty-ltd.myklpages.com/l/WWJGc5 Join my exclusive Mentored+ community: https://mentored.com.au/become-a-member/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Dr Stacy seems welcome to Project one hundred. How are
[0:03] Speaker 1: you going?
[0:03] Speaker 2: Oh, thanks for having me. I am currently freezing in
[0:07] Speaker 2: New Zealand because it's winter, but pretty.
[0:09] Speaker 3: Much really, yeah, it's cold. There were you in the
[0:11] Speaker 3: south part of New Zealand right the north.
[0:12] Speaker 2: Now I'm on the North Island about two and a
[0:16] Speaker 2: half hours southeast of Auckland, but we get the wind
[0:19] Speaker 2: that comes straight up of Antarctica, and so it might
[0:22] Speaker 2: be sunny and you go outside like, oh, that's freezing.
[0:25] Speaker 1: I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you.
[0:27] Speaker 3: I mean, like you've really been at the forefront of
[0:30] Speaker 3: talking about women's health, particularly in relation to exercise and
[0:34] Speaker 3: all the regimes that we have to have to be,
[0:36] Speaker 3: you know, to be healthy and live longer. What is
[0:40] Speaker 3: it though, in particular that females or women should be
[0:44] Speaker 3: looking at relative to muscle strength, you know, long term
[0:48] Speaker 3: health longevity generally speaking. Why is it different for women
[0:52] Speaker 3: to say relative to men or is it the same thing?
[0:55] Speaker 2: Well, I have to bring everyone back to like the
[0:58] Speaker 2: origins of research and medicine and how all this trajectory
[1:03] Speaker 2: of health started and we have to think about who
[1:05] Speaker 2: was in the room and it was men because women
[1:08] Speaker 2: weren't allowed in the room because they weren't deemed to
[1:10] Speaker 2: be smart enough or have a seat at the table
[1:14] Speaker 2: to have a voice. So as we start looking at
[1:16] Speaker 2: all the research and everything that's come out and the trajectories,
[1:19] Speaker 2: it's all on a false spaceline for women, so based
[1:23] Speaker 2: on male data. So if we look at the trajectories
[1:25] Speaker 2: of longevity, it's also viewed through that false spaceline. Because
[1:28] Speaker 2: men and women age differently, there's systems age in a
[1:32] Speaker 2: linear fashion, but that linearity is different, so we'll see
[1:36] Speaker 2: different time points of cardiovascular issues that have between men
[1:39] Speaker 2: and women. We know women have an uptake in cardiovascular
[1:43] Speaker 2: issues when they hit late perimenopause, but men, depending on
[1:46] Speaker 2: if they're an athlete or not, might start in their
[1:48] Speaker 2: forties or it might start in their sixties, So we
[1:51] Speaker 2: see different delineations. And when we talk about muscle and bone,
[1:55] Speaker 2: there's specific delineations for that. As we think about aging
[1:58] Speaker 2: between men and women, we know that as women age,
[2:01] Speaker 2: we tend to have a dual effect of the loss
[2:06] Speaker 2: of hormones as well as an aging factor, so that
[2:08] Speaker 2: affects our ability to have a really strong muscle contraction
[2:12] Speaker 2: to produce power to have the ability to have lots
[2:16] Speaker 2: of appropriate reception and agility, and this happens a lot
[2:19] Speaker 2: faster and a lot sooner than is in men. Men
[2:22] Speaker 2: have a linear decrease in both lean mass and that power,
[2:26] Speaker 2: but it's at smaller decrements where women have a big
[2:28] Speaker 2: whack of a loss of power and then they start
[2:31] Speaker 2: to lose mass. So we start talking about what is
[2:33] Speaker 2: optimal for men versus women for longevity and health span.
[2:37] Speaker 2: We have to actually think what is the baseline for
[2:39] Speaker 2: one sex versus the baseline of the other sex, and
[2:42] Speaker 2: what are the risk factors for major implications of avoiding
[2:46] Speaker 2: frailty and things like Alzheimer's As we get older.
[2:49] Speaker 3: Is there enough daughta around or do you need more
[2:51] Speaker 3: daughter and women to be able to start to build
[2:54] Speaker 3: out really solid, good baselines as to how women should
[2:58] Speaker 3: protect against all these diffferences.
[3:01] Speaker 2: We have enough data to start writing the guidelines, but
[3:04] Speaker 2: what we do need is more robust data on the outliers.
[3:08] Speaker 2: So if we think about the typical woman who has
[3:11] Speaker 2: access to health care and therefore has access to being
[3:15] Speaker 2: in databases for research or being a research participant, it
[3:20] Speaker 2: tends to be an upper middle class white woman, and
[3:23] Speaker 2: so we know that there are complete ethnic differences socioeconomic differences.
[3:28] Speaker 2: So we have enough for the middle of the Bell
[3:30] Speaker 2: curve to make general recommendations and to guide the middle
[3:34] Speaker 2: of the Bell curve. Right now, we're really trying to
[3:37] Speaker 2: upscale the outliers, like what happens if you come from
[3:40] Speaker 2: a Latino or pacifica background. How does culture and your
[3:43] Speaker 2: genetics impact different risk factors. So the data gap is
[3:48] Speaker 2: still there, but unfortunately it is still growing instead of
[3:51] Speaker 2: shrinking between men and women, especially in the age of AI,
[3:55] Speaker 2: because we start seeing AI and AI is turning out
[3:58] Speaker 2: outcomes and insights based on that broken baseline of male data.
[4:03] Speaker 2: So you know, we'll have healthcare professionals that are turning
[4:05] Speaker 2: to places like open evidence for information. But when you
[4:08] Speaker 2: compare open evidence versus a general chat like anthropics, Claude
[4:13] Speaker 2: claud is actually better than what this particular medical one
[4:17] Speaker 2: is supposed to be because the algorithms are learning from
[4:20] Speaker 2: that poor baseline, whereas if you have a large data lake,
[4:23] Speaker 2: then it can learn from more robust information.
[4:26] Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing.
[4:27] Speaker 3: I don't think many people know about this, and I'm
[4:29] Speaker 3: sort of already taken back by that, are you saying
[4:33] Speaker 3: there is a difference in the chemical system of a
[4:38] Speaker 3: woman relative to a man, or a female relative to
[4:41] Speaker 3: a mile or is it getting right down to the
[4:44] Speaker 3: cellar level, at a cellular level, is there a difference
[4:47] Speaker 3: between mile and female?
[4:48] Speaker 2: Both?
[4:49] Speaker 1: Right?
[4:49] Speaker 2: Both?
[4:50] Speaker 1: Wow?
[4:50] Speaker 2: So if we think about in utero, we have XX
[4:53] Speaker 2: versus XY, like this is primarily the research that we
[4:56] Speaker 2: have right now on the binary sex differences. So we know,
[5:00] Speaker 2: oh that what happens is the Y is just.
[5:03] Speaker 1: A small chromo chromosomes.
[5:05] Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So the Y chromosome is actually an X
[5:09] Speaker 2: with half of it's turned off because as we start
[5:12] Speaker 2: to have testosterone, it mutes the second half of an X.
[5:16] Speaker 2: So when we see under a microscope, the X is
[5:20] Speaker 2: huge and the Y is very small. So when we
[5:22] Speaker 2: start thinking about sex differences from a chromosomal standpoint, it
[5:27] Speaker 2: depends on the X and we have a silent X. Factors.
[5:30] Speaker 2: That means when you have two x's they talk to
[5:33] Speaker 2: each other to be able to turn certain genes on
[5:35] Speaker 2: and off. When you have an X Y you lose
[5:37] Speaker 2: some of that capability of having that conversation, which is
[5:40] Speaker 2: why feeding forward we see things like less metabolic dysfunction
[5:46] Speaker 2: in men versus women when we're looking at something like
[5:49] Speaker 2: shift work, because the two x's are having a stronger
[5:53] Speaker 2: conversation and a turn on the genetic profile to create
[5:57] Speaker 2: metabolic dysfunction under circadium misalignment than the x y. So
[6:01] Speaker 2: we have these specific sex differences, and then we have
[6:04] Speaker 2: environmental considerations as well as sex hormones that then can
[6:09] Speaker 2: create an epigenetic change. So we think about a lock
[6:12] Speaker 2: and a key, So the hormones can be the key
[6:16] Speaker 2: that unlocks a certain gene code even though it's not
[6:19] Speaker 2: changing DNA. So what I mean by that, I'll take
[6:22] Speaker 2: estrogen for an example, a muscle fiber. So everyone thinks
[6:25] Speaker 2: that testosterone is responsible for building muscle tissue. This is
[6:29] Speaker 2: why men get so bulky and can really put on
[6:32] Speaker 2: lean mass really effectively. We look at testosterone in women.
[6:35] Speaker 2: It doesn't work that way. Testosterone actually can inhibit muscle growth.
[6:40] Speaker 1: Wow.
[6:40] Speaker 2: But estrogen is a driver factor, driving factor for women's muscle.
[6:45] Speaker 2: So it's responsible for how our basic basal cell or
[6:49] Speaker 2: our satellite cell of muscle responds to tension, so it'll
[6:53] Speaker 2: upturn it and turn on some stem cells of muscle
[6:56] Speaker 2: to grow muscle. It's also responsible for how our contractile
[7:01] Speaker 2: proteins will come together to create a contraction. So we
[7:05] Speaker 2: know that estradyle or estrogen is so important for muscle
[7:08] Speaker 2: function and bone function and women, where everyone on the
[7:11] Speaker 2: outside of the bubble think it's testosterone because we've had
[7:15] Speaker 2: all of this conversation about testosterone being muscle and bone building.
[7:19] Speaker 2: Yes in the male body in the xy but in
[7:21] Speaker 2: the female body it's completely different.
[7:23] Speaker 3: Women have testosterone as well, but obviously not to the
[7:26] Speaker 3: levels of men have. So what is the function of
[7:29] Speaker 3: testosterone and women then.
[7:31] Speaker 2: So we see that it does help with bone strength,
[7:34] Speaker 2: it's libido oriented. It also counters some of estrogen's what
[7:41] Speaker 2: we call cell building capacity, so it counters some of
[7:45] Speaker 2: what estrogen does. So does progesterone, and then all three
[7:49] Speaker 2: of the female sex hormones can kind of break down
[7:53] Speaker 2: to certain steroids to then help other systems of the body.
[7:56] Speaker 2: So they work in conjunction. It's just what is the
[7:58] Speaker 2: ratio Whereas men have a lot of testosterone and they
[8:01] Speaker 2: have a little bit of estrogen and a little bit
[8:03] Speaker 2: of progesterone, so they counter each other but in different ways.
[8:07] Speaker 3: Is it fair to say therefore when you were talking
[8:10] Speaker 3: about the X and Y chromosomes and how the Y
[8:12] Speaker 3: chromosome is effective, the next sort of like an X
[8:15] Speaker 3: chromosome with half the half functions turned off.
[8:19] Speaker 1: Is it because.
[8:20] Speaker 3: We have those like a male have those X Y
[8:23] Speaker 3: chromosomes in them in their cells, that as a result
[8:27] Speaker 3: of that, those chromosomes then express different chemicals, so different
[8:32] Speaker 3: hormones into our whole system. And as a result of that,
[8:35] Speaker 3: we males respond differently to the way the two X
[8:38] Speaker 3: chromosomes and the female cell will get express certain hormones
[8:42] Speaker 3: for them to respond their way. Is that what we're
[8:45] Speaker 3: talking about when it come we're going from the settling
[8:47] Speaker 3: a level now to the chemical level.
[8:48] Speaker 1: But that is the that seems to be the procedure. Yeah,
[8:51] Speaker 1: Is that right?
[8:52] Speaker 2: Exactly? Yeah? And I mean I like using caffeine as
[8:55] Speaker 2: an example, right, We know that caffeine can affect you
[9:00] Speaker 2: or not affect you. And so when we look at
[9:02] Speaker 2: a genetic standpoint, we see that there are certain what
[9:06] Speaker 2: we call alleles. So that's part of a genetic code,
[9:09] Speaker 2: and if you have two alleles of this particular gene,
[9:13] Speaker 2: then you're really sensitive, regardless of your man or a woman.
[9:16] Speaker 1: And do you get one from mom, one from dead right, yep.
[9:18] Speaker 2: But when it comes down to when you drink caffeine
[9:20] Speaker 2: what happens. So when you drink caffeine, women's bodies tend
[9:24] Speaker 2: to hold on to it for a longer period of
[9:26] Speaker 2: time because those alleles that turn on the response to
[9:30] Speaker 2: caffeine and women, they turn on an enzyme, but the
[9:34] Speaker 2: response of that enzyme is not as fast or as
[9:37] Speaker 2: robust as it is when it's turned on by the
[9:40] Speaker 2: X Y. So we can have the same chemical coming in,
[9:43] Speaker 2: we could have the same what we call sip gene
[9:45] Speaker 2: and alleles, but it's the expression of the chemical response
[9:49] Speaker 2: from those alleles based on xx versus x Y that
[9:53] Speaker 2: determines caffeine clearance.
[9:55] Speaker 1: Can I just check on that caffeine paige?
[9:57] Speaker 3: Based on when you say caffeine clearance, do you I
[10:00] Speaker 3: mean the time it takes for the caffeine to have
[10:03] Speaker 3: an effect on the on you know, on on my
[10:07] Speaker 3: brain or do you do amount the time.
[10:10] Speaker 2: It lasts, how long it lasts, and how long it clears.
[10:13] Speaker 2: So this is why you have a lot of the
[10:14] Speaker 2: guys you're like, Oh, I could have an espresso after
[10:16] Speaker 2: dinner and I could still go to sleep, not a problem,
[10:18] Speaker 2: not me. But then then women are like, oh, I
[10:22] Speaker 2: can't have it afternoon because then I really can't sleep.
[10:25] Speaker 1: Wow.
[10:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, how does that then inform a woman as to
[10:30] Speaker 3: let's say we're talking, because it's going to be difficult
[10:32] Speaker 3: because you've got different age groups, But let's say a
[10:35] Speaker 3: thirty to forty year old woman who maybe hasn't had kids. Perhaps,
[10:39] Speaker 3: how does that what you just told me? Then inform
[10:41] Speaker 3: a thirty to forty year old woman to prepare for
[10:45] Speaker 3: an exercise regime? And what is it that you if
[10:50] Speaker 3: you were advising this particular individual, and this is not
[10:52] Speaker 3: an advice show, but if you advising this particular individual hypothetically,
[10:57] Speaker 3: what would they be trying to build?
[10:59] Speaker 2: So this this is a really interesting decade from thirty
[11:02] Speaker 2: to forty because one, we're still trying to understand did
[11:07] Speaker 2: you reach peak bone mass and were you capable of
[11:10] Speaker 2: reaching peak bone mass and muscle mass when you were
[11:13] Speaker 2: in your teens in twenties, Because if you start hitting
[11:15] Speaker 2: your early thirties and you didn't hit your peak bone mass,
[11:18] Speaker 2: then that's what we have to worry about. Because you
[11:20] Speaker 2: get to your mid thirties and you start getting into
[11:23] Speaker 2: more hormone dysfunction or perimenopause, which can accelerate bone loss.
[11:29] Speaker 2: So when we're talking to someone about an exercise routine,
[11:31] Speaker 2: especially in our thirties to forties, we lean into what
[11:34] Speaker 2: has been lifestyle habits and what is the trajectory if
[11:38] Speaker 2: you haven't reached the peak span of that particular system.
[11:42] Speaker 2: So for someone who's thirty to forty, those are the
[11:44] Speaker 2: first things I talk about. I'm like, Okay, what was
[11:46] Speaker 2: your lifestyle when you were a teenager, what was your
[11:49] Speaker 2: lifestyle when you were in your twenties, what's your training history?
[11:52] Speaker 2: Because from there I can say, hey, you know what,
[11:55] Speaker 2: we want to really boost the peak span of your
[11:57] Speaker 2: bone because we know that bone mass peaks for both
[12:00] Speaker 2: men and women in their early twenties, and if we
[12:02] Speaker 2: haven't reached that peak bone mass, we've missed peak span.
[12:06] Speaker 2: We want to build that before we lose it, because
[12:08] Speaker 2: if we don't build it as much as we can,
[12:11] Speaker 2: then the cliff of the drop off is so severe
[12:13] Speaker 2: that we're facing osioporosis in our late forties.
[12:16] Speaker 3: Wow.
[12:17] Speaker 2: So this is where it becomes really I guess, particular
[12:22] Speaker 2: in the type of exercise that we do in which
[12:24] Speaker 2: decade we're in in our teams. Through our twenties or
[12:28] Speaker 2: early thirties, you can pretty much do what you want
[12:30] Speaker 2: and you're going to get pretty good results. When we
[12:34] Speaker 2: start getting into our early thirties to our late thirties,
[12:38] Speaker 2: women really start to question what's going on. We start
[12:42] Speaker 2: seeing more and more what we call ann ovulatory cycles
[12:45] Speaker 2: or regular minstrual cycles. That's an early sign of perimenopause.
[12:49] Speaker 2: If you're not seeing that, when we start to see
[12:52] Speaker 2: less of a response to the training that you're doing,
[12:55] Speaker 2: so it might take a greater effort or more recovery
[12:59] Speaker 2: to get the same gains as a male counterpart. Or
[13:03] Speaker 2: even if you're comparing yourself to your early thirties to
[13:06] Speaker 2: your late thirties, you'll see that there is a significant
[13:09] Speaker 2: difference between the way that your body responded. And it's
[13:12] Speaker 2: not an age factor. It's a sex hormone factor because
[13:15] Speaker 2: men won't start to experience that until they're in their
[13:18] Speaker 2: mid to late forties to fifties, So there is this
[13:21] Speaker 2: whole decade shift in the thirties to forties is really important.
[13:24] Speaker 2: We're talking about how are we going to maximize our
[13:26] Speaker 2: peak span, which is each system reaches a peak at
[13:29] Speaker 2: different points in our life, and we want to be
[13:32] Speaker 2: able to maximize that so that the cliff of drop
[13:34] Speaker 2: off is way less that we have to worry about
[13:38] Speaker 2: hitting the bottom when we get to our late forties
[13:42] Speaker 2: early fifties and having to rebuild.
[13:44] Speaker 3: And I'm picking on thirty forties for particular reason because
[13:47] Speaker 3: they don't want to go to forty fifty to fifty sixty,
[13:49] Speaker 3: but just starting on thirty forties, what are the sort
[13:52] Speaker 3: of questions they're asking themselves in informing themselves as to
[13:55] Speaker 3: how they should excose between thirty and forty relative to say,
[13:58] Speaker 3: what they should have they made done from fifteen to thirty.
[14:02] Speaker 3: I mean, do they ask themselves or did I play
[14:04] Speaker 3: soccer or football? Was I a basketball or a netballer?
[14:09] Speaker 3: Did I lift weights? What are the sort of questions
[14:11] Speaker 3: or none of those?
[14:12] Speaker 1: Probably? What are the sort of questions are those are?
[14:15] Speaker 2: So if we're looking at interminute sport like soccer or
[14:18] Speaker 2: rugby or even netball, those are all high intensity, low
[14:22] Speaker 2: intensity that's really good polarization and there's lots of agility,
[14:24] Speaker 2: appropriate reception. Did I lift weights? Great? Yes, because then
[14:28] Speaker 2: we know that you're also putting impact on the bone
[14:30] Speaker 2: that's going to help reach that peak bone mass. The
[14:33] Speaker 2: other question that we really need to dig into is
[14:36] Speaker 2: what was your nutrition. Were you able to fuel for
[14:40] Speaker 2: your exercise and recover appropriately from training. Were there times
[14:44] Speaker 2: where you lost your period or times where became really
[14:47] Speaker 2: irregular or did you start late like the minstrual cycles
[14:50] Speaker 2: a big telling on what we call energy availability, because
[14:53] Speaker 2: if we get into times of low energy availability, it
[14:56] Speaker 2: mutes all of our systems. So we're not really maximizing
[15:00] Speaker 2: muscle cell development and growth and strength development, we're not
[15:04] Speaker 2: really maximizing bone turnover. If a woman is saying, oh, yeah,
[15:08] Speaker 2: I played soccer, but I had a lot of stress reactions,
[15:12] Speaker 2: so not full stress fractures, but stress reactions in the bone,
[15:15] Speaker 2: then I know that they didn't reach peak bone mass
[15:17] Speaker 2: because their bone isn't strong enough to withstand the intermittent
[15:21] Speaker 2: activity of soccer. Did you have an ACL injury or
[15:24] Speaker 2: any kind of other soft tissue injury. From a mechanistic standpoint,
[15:29] Speaker 2: most women who play soccer have some kind of knee issue,
[15:32] Speaker 2: and that's because they're overdeveloped in their quad and not
[15:35] Speaker 2: developed enough in their posterior chain. So then we have
[15:37] Speaker 2: to look at the strength training that they're doing. So
[15:40] Speaker 2: it's really if I was going to sit down with
[15:42] Speaker 2: someone and ask them a question so they can ask
[15:44] Speaker 2: this themselves. When I was fifteen to thirty, what was
[15:47] Speaker 2: my sporting like life? Did I have big holes in
[15:50] Speaker 2: my sporting life? Was I someone who just ran or
[15:53] Speaker 2: someone just rowed, or someone who just swam. That isn't
[15:56] Speaker 2: kind of the kind of stuff that you can do
[15:58] Speaker 2: to build bone. So we have to think of putting
[16:00] Speaker 2: in some strength training, some jump training. Was I someone
[16:03] Speaker 2: who did lots of intermittent sport? Fantastic? You have a
[16:06] Speaker 2: leg up on peak span, because we know that that's
[16:09] Speaker 2: taxing cardiovascular system, it's helping metabolic control, it's helping reduce
[16:15] Speaker 2: body fat, and it's putting different load on the bone.
[16:18] Speaker 2: But we still don't have a large aerobic base, so
[16:21] Speaker 2: maybe we need to work on that, and we also
[16:23] Speaker 2: need to work on the weaknesses within in the weight
[16:26] Speaker 2: room so we don't get into soft tissue injury and
[16:29] Speaker 2: we can keep building the bone and the muscle that
[16:32] Speaker 2: we need. So it's really, what have you done from
[16:35] Speaker 2: a training history and what do we need to maximize
[16:38] Speaker 2: what you didn't do?
[16:40] Speaker 3: Is it too late at thirty to forty to start
[16:42] Speaker 3: to do this resistance work.
[16:44] Speaker 2: Not at all, Not at all. It's never too late.
[16:47] Speaker 2: There was this really cool study that came out two
[16:49] Speaker 2: months ago from the UK that was actually looking at
[16:53] Speaker 2: this specific question from muscle and muscle strength. So it
[16:56] Speaker 2: took eighteen to twenty two year old men and women
[17:00] Speaker 2: and seventy five to eighty year old men and women
[17:03] Speaker 2: that had never lifted weights before, put them both on
[17:06] Speaker 2: the same four week progressive resistance training, so they're all
[17:09] Speaker 2: doing relative strength work to their body weight and ability.
[17:14] Speaker 2: And then they were looking at the strength of the
[17:16] Speaker 2: contraction and the tonality, so that means how fast the
[17:19] Speaker 2: nerve conducted to create a contraction. So the old line
[17:23] Speaker 2: of thought was as you get older, you can't develop
[17:25] Speaker 2: a really fast contraction, that the ability to generate power
[17:29] Speaker 2: is not there. This study showed it's completely not true
[17:33] Speaker 2: that regardless of where you are, because the body is
[17:36] Speaker 2: very malleable and responds to stress, that wherever you are
[17:40] Speaker 2: in an age span, you can improve your muscle function.
[17:44] Speaker 2: And this is what we're after, especially when we're talking
[17:46] Speaker 2: about avoiding sarcopina or avoiding osteoporosis. Does not matter how
[17:51] Speaker 2: old you are, you can still develop power and strength
[17:54] Speaker 2: and lean mass and bone.
[17:56] Speaker 3: Maybe you could define what you mean by muscle function
[17:58] Speaker 3: because it's your bility, power, strength, durance. Do I mean
[18:04] Speaker 3: there's probably a number of factors towards what from a
[18:07] Speaker 3: scientific point of view, what are you talking about?
[18:09] Speaker 2: So when we're talking about muscle muscle function, I'm bringing
[18:13] Speaker 2: it right down to central nervous system, not how much
[18:16] Speaker 2: muscle we have, because we could have a lot of
[18:18] Speaker 2: muscle mass, but that doesn't mean that it can respond
[18:21] Speaker 2: really quickly. Say you step off a curb when you're older,
[18:25] Speaker 2: and you don't have the muscle function to quickly correct yourself.
[18:29] Speaker 1: So you've done for Beeva exactly.
[18:31] Speaker 2: Because we know that if you're in your seventies and
[18:33] Speaker 2: you break your hip, you have a sixty percent chance of.
[18:36] Speaker 1: Dying within two years of something.
[18:39] Speaker 2: So when we're talking about muscle function and how fast
[18:43] Speaker 2: that nerve conducts and how fast it can affect the
[18:45] Speaker 2: muscle fibers to contract, that's what we're after. And that's
[18:48] Speaker 2: also why we say pure strength and power, because that's
[18:52] Speaker 2: connecting the central nervous system to be able to respond
[18:55] Speaker 2: quickly to a stimulus to then create a nerve impulse
[19:00] Speaker 2: down to a whole bunch of muscle fibers to coordinate
[19:02] Speaker 2: them to contract quickly, and that's what we're after. So
[19:05] Speaker 2: when we talk about strength training, that's the very first
[19:08] Speaker 2: mechanism of adaptation is a central nervous system being able
[19:12] Speaker 2: to tap into quick conduction and really grabbing muscle fibers
[19:17] Speaker 2: together to coordinate them to contract at the same time
[19:20] Speaker 2: really strongly, and that's the important part of muscle function.
[19:23] Speaker 2: Then we can start talking about developing more mass. And
[19:26] Speaker 2: as you're developing the mass, we also want to have
[19:29] Speaker 2: that central nervous system thing. The good thing about strength
[19:32] Speaker 2: training is it doesn't matter what rep range you're in,
[19:35] Speaker 2: you're going to develop mass. But as we get older,
[19:37] Speaker 2: we want to focus on the heavier loads and the
[19:41] Speaker 2: lower rep range to keep tapping into that central nervous
[19:44] Speaker 2: system because we want to generate that power and that
[19:47] Speaker 2: quick conduction of the nerve because that's very protective. We
[19:52] Speaker 2: talk about preventing frailty, we talk about skeletal longevity, and
[19:57] Speaker 2: all of that is on this power based part. And yes,
[20:00] Speaker 2: will develop mass regardless if you're a man or a woman,
[20:03] Speaker 2: regardless of what strength or what rep rains you're in.
[20:06] Speaker 2: But we really try to pull people who are the
[20:09] Speaker 2: forties plus down into the power based of a zero
[20:12] Speaker 2: to eight reps at a heavier load to really tap
[20:15] Speaker 2: in the central nervous system to maintain the type two fibers,
[20:19] Speaker 2: to maintain agility, appropriate reception and reaction.
[20:23] Speaker 3: Is that the reason therefore that some exercises like for example,
[20:27] Speaker 3: and this applies amount of female like for example, our
[20:30] Speaker 3: deadlifts are important because say, the central of the system
[20:34] Speaker 3: is sort of activating a lot of muscles, not just one.
[20:38] Speaker 3: A compound Movement's probably a better way putting it, is
[20:40] Speaker 3: that the reason that's so important.
[20:42] Speaker 2: Yes, because it is coordinating total body. And this is
[20:45] Speaker 2: a functional movement. So if we talk about a compound
[20:48] Speaker 2: movement like a deadlift, you can also think about it.
[20:51] Speaker 2: Is you have to bend down and pick up your
[20:52] Speaker 2: grandkid or your kid or a big suitcase. Right, So
[20:56] Speaker 2: you're effectively doing a deadlift when you do that, because
[20:58] Speaker 2: you have to activate the whole body. If you're not
[21:00] Speaker 2: used to doing dead lifts, you might hurt your back,
[21:03] Speaker 2: you might not have the strength to pull it up right,
[21:05] Speaker 2: because if you're just doing leg press, you don't have
[21:08] Speaker 2: that full coordination. There's a time and a place for
[21:11] Speaker 2: those complementary machine stuff. But when we're talking about being
[21:14] Speaker 2: really focused on functional movement, it's compound movements of the
[21:19] Speaker 2: push pull the front like your squat movements of a
[21:25] Speaker 2: knee focus or your hinge motion for posterior chain. So
[21:29] Speaker 2: you are looking at your squats, your dead lifts, your
[21:31] Speaker 2: bulgarian split squats, your push presses, all of that because
[21:34] Speaker 2: it is coordinating every muscle in the body to do
[21:37] Speaker 2: a movement. And the other thing that we know from
[21:40] Speaker 2: doing heavier compound movements, and this is primarily because I
[21:43] Speaker 2: have some research going in the Alzheimer's space that we're
[21:47] Speaker 2: seeing that with heavier movements because it's such a neural load,
[21:50] Speaker 2: so that means it really taps into central nervous system
[21:52] Speaker 2: and the brain to be able to coordinate and lift
[21:55] Speaker 2: things like that. That with the heavier loads, we have
[21:58] Speaker 2: a really good neural connectivity in the prefrontal cortex. So
[22:02] Speaker 2: that's the very first part that goes because that's our
[22:05] Speaker 2: cognition and a reaction, and that's the first part that
[22:08] Speaker 2: goes with dementia and Alzheimer's. So by doing the compound
[22:11] Speaker 2: movements and lifting heavier, we are actually reducing the onset
[22:17] Speaker 2: of dementia by keeping those neural conversations and connections going.
[22:22] Speaker 2: We see that lighter loads and body weight doesn't do
[22:24] Speaker 2: the same thing. It increases what we call BD and F,
[22:27] Speaker 2: which is like miracle growth for the brain. So it
[22:30] Speaker 2: does help with brain volume and brain health, but not
[22:33] Speaker 2: with neural connection. I think this is the conversation that
[22:36] Speaker 2: is not had in the strength and conditioning world about
[22:40] Speaker 2: what are we doing besides just trying to put on mass.
[22:43] Speaker 2: For me, I'm trying to get women and men to
[22:46] Speaker 2: understand we want to protect the brain because that's how
[22:49] Speaker 2: we actually can have health span. How do we do
[22:51] Speaker 2: that in the gym? Heavier loads, jumping plios, lots of
[22:56] Speaker 2: different kind of confusion to the muscles. You might be
[22:59] Speaker 2: doing a lateral bar, slams, or you know, twists and
[23:02] Speaker 2: catches and land mine presses, which are all still total
[23:05] Speaker 2: body movements, but it creates such a neural load that
[23:09] Speaker 2: improves brain function.
[23:11] Speaker 1: Gogle, I wouldn't mind talking about that for a moment.
[23:13] Speaker 3: Is because you know, like let's say we are stepping
[23:16] Speaker 3: off a curb and potentially, you know, we could fall
[23:18] Speaker 3: over and if we're building muscle strength to help us
[23:25] Speaker 3: with those functions, and we decide to do dead list,
[23:27] Speaker 3: which is quite a linear sort of movement, what about
[23:31] Speaker 3: these players, I mean like jumping up in our box
[23:35] Speaker 3: and then jumping from box to box and all those
[23:36] Speaker 3: sorts of things. What about that type of exercise regime?
[23:39] Speaker 3: Does that have the same effect as say lifting a
[23:41] Speaker 3: heavy load. Always it fit into the regime.
[23:45] Speaker 2: Yeah, So if we think about players and we think
[23:47] Speaker 2: about box jumps, and you see these people doing amazing
[23:51] Speaker 2: kind of bounds and jumps and things, that's our pliometric work.
[23:55] Speaker 2: So I mean, I've seen people who are taking one
[23:57] Speaker 2: of the trap bars, so you know, the hex bar
[24:00] Speaker 2: or deadlift, and they have one hundred kilos on it
[24:02] Speaker 2: and they're jumping with it because they have so much power. Right,
[24:05] Speaker 2: So that's been trained into them and they've maintained their
[24:08] Speaker 2: fast twitch. From a benefit standpoint, we know that plyometric
[24:14] Speaker 2: work not having to jump high, but having to work
[24:17] Speaker 2: on that rebound. So maybe we're doing what we call
[24:21] Speaker 2: contrast training with squats, So we do two or three
[24:24] Speaker 2: reps at a heavy load, then you have twenty seconds rest,
[24:28] Speaker 2: and then you do squat jumps, so you're getting that
[24:30] Speaker 2: plyo work and under furshet of the heavy load. Then
[24:32] Speaker 2: you do the squat jumps, and then you go back
[24:34] Speaker 2: in no wight, no wight, no waight, just body weight.
[24:37] Speaker 2: Then you go back and do another heavy load. You're
[24:39] Speaker 2: incorporating a little bit of confusion but also improving that power.
[24:42] Speaker 2: So it's not about necessarily having to have specific high
[24:45] Speaker 2: jump pliometrics. It's like, where can we instigate some agility
[24:49] Speaker 2: and power within what we're already doing. If we want
[24:52] Speaker 2: to challenge in ourselves, then maybe yeah, we want to
[24:54] Speaker 2: build up our box jumps, but that's not as important
[24:57] Speaker 2: as making sure that you are jumping.
[25:00] Speaker 3: You think there's a lot on you know, obviously all
[25:02] Speaker 3: of us look at Instagram and social can be good
[25:04] Speaker 3: and bad, can motivate us, but at the same time
[25:06] Speaker 3: can sort of be a bit misleading because like there
[25:09] Speaker 3: seems to be a competition at the moment, at least
[25:11] Speaker 3: on my on the algorithm that is playing itself to
[25:14] Speaker 3: me is that plymetrics is becoming it's nearly becoming a
[25:18] Speaker 3: bit of a shelf game.
[25:20] Speaker 1: It's nearly like saying those deadlifts.
[25:22] Speaker 3: Are useless and you should be doing this ply metrics
[25:27] Speaker 3: and actually, when you look at these dudes like they're
[25:29] Speaker 3: unbelievably built, Like, I'm thinking, my god, I never looked
[25:31] Speaker 3: like that, and I don't know anyone who's had looked
[25:34] Speaker 3: like that, And maybe I should have been doing this
[25:36] Speaker 3: sort of stuff before. Is this misleading us? And where
[25:39] Speaker 3: social fit into this whole game that you're in.
[25:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, So if we think about social and clickbait, that's
[25:46] Speaker 2: the problem, right. People will put really polarizing things on
[25:50] Speaker 2: social to get people to watch them. And it's just
[25:54] Speaker 2: like reality TV is completely scripted. It's curated to be
[25:58] Speaker 2: what is coming out, right, So when we start really
[26:01] Speaker 2: leaning into social media, it doesn't give you the full
[26:04] Speaker 2: story or the nuances. So if I'm thinking about the
[26:09] Speaker 2: algorithm that you're locked into, with everyone showing off about
[26:12] Speaker 2: their power moves, I always go back to, well, how
[26:15] Speaker 2: did you develop that power in the first place. We
[26:18] Speaker 2: know that hip thrust and deadlifts are paramount for being
[26:21] Speaker 2: able to build up the posterior chain in order to
[26:24] Speaker 2: have a high sprint capacity and a high power of
[26:27] Speaker 2: jumping capacity. So that's the part that they're not telling you.
[26:31] Speaker 2: They're not saying I had to build a base of
[26:33] Speaker 2: strength first before I could do these power moves. And
[26:36] Speaker 2: this is where we start to see injury and deflation
[26:40] Speaker 2: and lack of confidence because people who are leaning into
[26:44] Speaker 2: these clickbait reels or these short snippets of time that
[26:47] Speaker 2: have been curated for a message rather than giving the
[26:50] Speaker 2: full story.
[26:52] Speaker 3: So it's a slow build too. So notion, so how
[26:56] Speaker 3: important is that for people to understand? Look, I've never
[26:59] Speaker 3: done the exercise gys. I would like to do some
[27:02] Speaker 3: exercise because I now understand that there's a lot of
[27:05] Speaker 3: benefits in terms of lifespan, but also probably equally important,
[27:08] Speaker 3: probably maybe more important health span being healthy during that
[27:11] Speaker 3: long life. I'm going to start doing some resistance work.
[27:14] Speaker 3: For example, my dad never did resistance work, but around
[27:19] Speaker 3: about eighty five he started. He asked me could I
[27:22] Speaker 3: get him some handweights, and then he conquered those ones
[27:24] Speaker 3: that are only two and a half. Then he got
[27:26] Speaker 3: to five kilo's and he started standing up, sitting down,
[27:29] Speaker 3: the chairls and those sorts of things. He realized, I
[27:32] Speaker 3: don't know why I realized, but he realized that they're
[27:35] Speaker 3: you know, lifting some resistance stuff is important. What should
[27:39] Speaker 3: we be doing now? If where you know, if a
[27:42] Speaker 3: forty year old person sitting here listening to you speak, woman,
[27:46] Speaker 3: what she should should she be thinking about? I don't
[27:49] Speaker 3: mean sort of building a program, but what you should
[27:51] Speaker 3: be thinking about as having like an appropriate program like
[27:55] Speaker 3: between say heart lune and resistance work. I mean she
[27:59] Speaker 3: should be doing resistance for one hour a week. I
[28:02] Speaker 3: mean I listened to Peter Tayor, and Peter sort of
[28:04] Speaker 3: says things like, you know, you should be doing you know,
[28:06] Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty minutes of zone two and three
[28:08] Speaker 3: and then you should Like it's sort of like I think, fuck, like,
[28:11] Speaker 3: I don't know if time to do all this sort
[28:12] Speaker 3: of stuff. That's like I don't I'm trying to wake away.
[28:16] Speaker 3: The optimum is and what should a woman be thinking about?
[28:19] Speaker 2: There was a study that came out last week about
[28:21] Speaker 2: weight lifting and what's the optimal sweet spot? Yeah, ironically
[28:26] Speaker 2: it's one hundred and nineteen minutes a week, not a week. Yeah,
[28:30] Speaker 2: So I mean that can be divided up into what
[28:33] Speaker 2: three thirty ish minute sessions a week yep, right, so
[28:37] Speaker 2: it doesn't take a lot and ideally total body so
[28:41] Speaker 2: you're doing some compound movements after that, they see the
[28:44] Speaker 2: risk factors for all cause mortality doesn't go down, but
[28:51] Speaker 2: it really does significantly have an impact on things like
[28:54] Speaker 2: dementia and bone and cyclopamia. When you hit that one
[28:57] Speaker 2: hundred and nineteen minutes.
[28:58] Speaker 1: Positively positive, yeah.
[29:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, which is a pretty far cry from the
[29:06] Speaker 2: to moderate exercise resistance training sessions that things like ACSM
[29:11] Speaker 2: have out there. We're starting to see more and more
[29:13] Speaker 2: research on the benefits of resistance training. Not only that,
[29:17] Speaker 2: but resistance training does give you metabolic changes. As we
[29:21] Speaker 2: talk about zone two and mitochondria and that kind of stuff,
[29:24] Speaker 2: we still get mitochondrial changes with resistance training. And when
[29:28] Speaker 2: we talking about cardiovascular and like reducing things like viscraal fat,
[29:32] Speaker 2: we need a really high intensity work for that. We
[29:35] Speaker 2: know that short bouts of really high intensity work improve
[29:38] Speaker 2: cardiovascular because one we're having to really shift blood rapidly
[29:43] Speaker 2: to the muscles and the heart under high loads, so
[29:47] Speaker 2: we have a vascular component that improves our blood pressure
[29:50] Speaker 2: and the way that our body controls blood flow. We
[29:53] Speaker 2: see that when you do high intensity it uses a
[29:56] Speaker 2: lot of blood gluecose, so it improves insulin sensitivity because
[30:00] Speaker 2: as the muscle cells then adapt to be able to
[30:02] Speaker 2: use insulin with our used glucose without insulin. If we
[30:07] Speaker 2: have less insulin resistance, then we also decrease our leptin resistance,
[30:11] Speaker 2: which becomes a problem for women in their mid to
[30:14] Speaker 2: late forties where they never feel like they're really full
[30:17] Speaker 2: and they're craving lots of carbohydrate. There's a change in
[30:19] Speaker 2: the gut microbiome, but we are also starting to see
[30:22] Speaker 2: a little bit of leptin resistance because that goes up
[30:26] Speaker 2: as insulin resistance goes up. So if we're talking about
[30:28] Speaker 2: high intensity work that helps with metabolic from a hormonal standpoint,
[30:34] Speaker 2: it also creates a change so that your body doesn't
[30:37] Speaker 2: have a stimulus to store visceral fat, which is that
[30:40] Speaker 2: deep abdominal kind of dangerous fat, and it improves our
[30:44] Speaker 2: heart and lungs because we have to be able to
[30:46] Speaker 2: shift blood quickly and get oxygen to the working muscles.
[30:49] Speaker 2: So then when we're looking at what does that look
[30:51] Speaker 2: like in a week, right, it's like if we can
[30:53] Speaker 2: hit three forty minute sessions a week. In that forty
[30:58] Speaker 2: minute session space, sometime doing some mobilization and warm up
[31:03] Speaker 2: because we have to make sure our tenons and ligaments
[31:05] Speaker 2: are warmed up as well. As our muscles get into
[31:08] Speaker 2: some compound compound loading, and then we finish with a
[31:12] Speaker 2: couple of sprints or a couple of one minute efforts
[31:15] Speaker 2: with one minute off, so that we're getting to that
[31:17] Speaker 2: higher range of our anaerobic capacity. And if we think
[31:21] Speaker 2: about it from a longevity marker, it's hitting those capacities right.
[31:24] Speaker 2: We're hitting VO two with our high intensity to the end,
[31:27] Speaker 2: we're hitting our grip strength through total compound movement. We're
[31:31] Speaker 2: helping with brain health, cardiovascular health, we're helping with mobility
[31:35] Speaker 2: and agility because we're warming up properly, so you're hitting
[31:38] Speaker 2: all the notes that help protect you from having just lifespan,
[31:43] Speaker 2: but it's really improving your ability to have a health span.
[31:48] Speaker 3: You mentioned something really interesting states about alzhemis something that
[31:51] Speaker 3: I've observed here in Australia. I don't know if it's
[31:53] Speaker 3: the case anywhere else in the world, but more women
[31:56] Speaker 3: have dementia soften from Alzhemers here in Australia. Dementia being
[32:00] Speaker 3: the broad but like underneath that Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's and men.
[32:05] Speaker 3: Do you think that is Are there any studies to
[32:07] Speaker 3: say that's because women haven't historically done exercise, it's not
[32:12] Speaker 3: or is it a genetic.
[32:13] Speaker 2: Well, this is one of those interesting sex differences. So
[32:17] Speaker 2: we're seeing that it has to do with some of
[32:19] Speaker 2: the X chromosome and some of the genetic coding. We
[32:24] Speaker 2: do see that there are men walking around that on
[32:27] Speaker 2: a brain scan look like they should be fully late
[32:31] Speaker 2: Alzheimer's individuals, but they're fully functional because they have a
[32:35] Speaker 2: genetic coding from the why that allows their brain to
[32:39] Speaker 2: have lots of plaques and tangles and still be very
[32:42] Speaker 2: cognitively with it. That doesn't happen with women. So there's
[32:47] Speaker 2: in the States, it's one in six men might be diagnosed,
[32:53] Speaker 2: but for women it's five out.
[32:55] Speaker 1: Of six, five out of six.
[32:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, when you get in your eighties.
[32:59] Speaker 1: It's massive, like eighty five percent. WHOA.
[33:02] Speaker 2: We're talking about brain and cognition, not for a Lolzheimer's,
[33:05] Speaker 2: but cognitive decline.
[33:07] Speaker 1: Four times the risk. WHOA.
[33:10] Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's a lot of rapid acceleration into looking
[33:14] Speaker 2: at what is causing this and what can we do.
[33:17] Speaker 2: And that's part of the research that I'm doing with
[33:19] Speaker 2: some groups in the States is looking at you have
[33:23] Speaker 2: a genetic risk factor, you have early dementia, you have
[33:26] Speaker 2: late onset Alzheimer's and you're living at home. Can we
[33:29] Speaker 2: do specific interventions to either halt it, attenuate it, or
[33:33] Speaker 2: stop it because it's so important because it's such a
[33:37] Speaker 2: drain on the health span of women.
[33:40] Speaker 3: Wow, sort of late thirties, early forties, perimenopause starts to
[33:45] Speaker 3: kick in. I mean, obviously that's a broad statement, but
[33:48] Speaker 3: you know, let's just pick it as take it as
[33:51] Speaker 3: a fair statement. What are the indicators that someone a
[33:54] Speaker 3: woman who is experiencing perimenopause, apart from I don't know
[33:58] Speaker 3: if you said dysregulated period circles and things like that,
[34:01] Speaker 3: but what is she looking at and what she should
[34:05] Speaker 3: be doing in terms of her exercise regime around that.
[34:07] Speaker 2: Yeah, So there are no specific blood tests. It's all symptomology.
[34:11] Speaker 2: Some of the first early symptoms. Unfortunately, a woman will
[34:15] Speaker 2: probably go to her doctor going I feel like I'm
[34:17] Speaker 2: having panic attacks, and I can't sleep, and I feel
[34:20] Speaker 2: highly stressed. Those are actually really early symptoms of perimenopause
[34:25] Speaker 2: because what's happening is you're having less and less progesteronwe
[34:30] Speaker 2: counter estrogen, because you might still have a regular period
[34:34] Speaker 2: or a regular bleed, but you didn't ovulate, and you
[34:38] Speaker 2: can't discern unless you have specific tests if you ovulate
[34:40] Speaker 2: it or not. So when a woman is in her
[34:43] Speaker 2: late or mid to late thirties and starts going, I'm
[34:46] Speaker 2: having panic attacks and anxiety and I can't sleep, then
[34:49] Speaker 2: start tracking symptoms against a perimenopausal chart, or go see
[34:54] Speaker 2: a physician that is well versed in menopause. Because if
[34:58] Speaker 2: you go, as a general woman in her mid thirties
[35:00] Speaker 2: to your GP and say I'm having problems breathing, panic, anxiety, depression,
[35:07] Speaker 2: high stress, then most likely they're going to lean into
[35:10] Speaker 2: the clinical avenue of going down an SSRI or some
[35:14] Speaker 2: other kind of cognitive and behavioral drug therapy instead of
[35:19] Speaker 2: looking at hormone flux and understanding that it's a whole
[35:22] Speaker 2: body system that's starting to be affected by less progesterone.
[35:27] Speaker 3: So they're going to treat you likely to depressed exactly, Yeah, yeah,
[35:30] Speaker 3: as opposed to it's a hormonal problem exactly creating these symptoms.
[35:35] Speaker 3: So the symptomology. So when you're let's say someone starts
[35:39] Speaker 3: to recognize these symptoms, where does HI two hormone replacement
[35:43] Speaker 3: therapy HI TW you fit into these programs or what
[35:46] Speaker 3: would you say about that.
[35:47] Speaker 2: So when we look at menopause hormone therapy, it's a
[35:50] Speaker 2: tool and a tool basket for sure, but a lot
[35:53] Speaker 2: of people are leaning into it because they think it's
[35:55] Speaker 2: going to stop perimenopause, and we know absolutely that's not true.
[35:58] Speaker 2: The only thing that has been proven with menopauster hormone
[36:02] Speaker 2: therapy as it's very effective for protecting your bones. So
[36:06] Speaker 2: if you have a family history or you yourself have
[36:09] Speaker 2: gotten your DEXA and you see you have low bone density,
[36:11] Speaker 2: then definitely have that conversation, especially if you're in your
[36:13] Speaker 2: late thirties early forties. When we start having lots of symptomology.
[36:17] Speaker 2: This is where we look at lifestyle. So we know
[36:20] Speaker 2: that dietary changes help, We know that training changes help.
[36:24] Speaker 2: We know that getting and nailing sleep is one of
[36:27] Speaker 2: the pillars. And having that social connection so that you
[36:31] Speaker 2: can have times of laughter and being out from under
[36:34] Speaker 2: the stress of life. Those are all really super important
[36:37] Speaker 2: lifestyle factors that help with symptomology. There are other non
[36:41] Speaker 2: hormonal options, but it's all symptom driven at the moment.
[36:44] Speaker 2: There's no like I said, there's no specific blood tests.
[36:47] Speaker 2: It's I think the whole everyone needs to be on
[36:50] Speaker 2: it or you should never use it comes from two
[36:53] Speaker 2: different studies that happen to be going on at the
[36:55] Speaker 2: same time. So everyone hears about the Women's Health Initiative
[36:58] Speaker 2: study in the States that said, you know, no one
[37:00] Speaker 2: should use hormone replacement therapy because it causes cancer and dementia.
[37:05] Speaker 2: But that was based on women who were ten years
[37:09] Speaker 2: plus post menopause, where you had a whole bunch of
[37:12] Speaker 2: biological changes with the receptors where they weren't able to
[37:16] Speaker 2: use hormones. So it wasn't surprising that study was set
[37:19] Speaker 2: up to see if we put women back on hormones
[37:21] Speaker 2: after they've been off it for a long period of time,
[37:24] Speaker 2: would it help And it didn't. But at the very
[37:26] Speaker 2: same time, there was a study in the UK going
[37:29] Speaker 2: that was called the Million Women's Study, and it was
[37:32] Speaker 2: looking at using hormone replacement therapy for women who were
[37:35] Speaker 2: in their early forties mid forties who were definitely in
[37:39] Speaker 2: perimenopause and it helped. So now we see this playing
[37:43] Speaker 2: out in today's society where in the US maybe five
[37:47] Speaker 2: percent of women who can access hormone replacement therapy do
[37:52] Speaker 2: and the rest are too afraid or don't have access
[37:55] Speaker 2: or haven't asked about it. But any of the commonwealths,
[37:58] Speaker 2: especially the UK and UK doctors who have trained doctors
[38:03] Speaker 2: who come to Australia and New Zealand, Canada, everyone is
[38:06] Speaker 2: very pro image G and say, yeah, let's look at
[38:08] Speaker 2: this as a means to help. Just like if you
[38:12] Speaker 2: were having severe depression, we would use an SSRI. And
[38:16] Speaker 2: cognitive behavior therapy is a medical medication that is a
[38:20] Speaker 2: tool on a toolbox. So we start to have all
[38:22] Speaker 2: these conversations of yes, no, should I or shouldn't I?
[38:26] Speaker 2: But it depends on where that conversation or origin.
[38:30] Speaker 3: I don't want to be looking like a jump around
[38:32] Speaker 3: old Tom. But you says, as you're speaking, I thought
[38:34] Speaker 3: of something really quite important. I think, where do you
[38:37] Speaker 3: rank the significance of accessing a DEXA machine, which is
[38:42] Speaker 3: not expensive and they're pretty accessible everywhere here in Australia.
[38:45] Speaker 1: At least to get yourself a baseline.
[38:48] Speaker 3: And what would you suggest to people, you know, when
[38:51] Speaker 3: should they start getting these baselines in terms of the
[38:53] Speaker 3: bone density, muscle mats, et cetera.
[38:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, I started getting a DEXA every year since I
[38:57] Speaker 2: was forty one. Will do it every you're around my
[39:02] Speaker 2: birthday and.
[39:04] Speaker 1: Have your birthday. When you say what the result is?
[39:07] Speaker 3: Have you both that?
[39:08] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly been. I'm pleasantly surprised that, you know, body
[39:12] Speaker 2: weight on the scale hasn't fluctuated that much in that decade,
[39:16] Speaker 2: as I say, my real age maybe a kilo or two,
[39:20] Speaker 2: but body composition has significantly improved. Lean mass has gone up,
[39:24] Speaker 2: bone mineral density has gone up, body fat has gone down.
[39:29] Speaker 2: And so I think having that baseline and being able
[39:31] Speaker 2: to compare year to year can tell you different stress points.
[39:34] Speaker 3: Right.
[39:35] Speaker 2: There was one one Dexa I got where my body
[39:37] Speaker 2: fat was so incredibly low. I was like, WHOA, what happened?
[39:41] Speaker 2: And it was because I just came off a massive
[39:44] Speaker 2: amount of stress and hadn't been training and eating properly.
[39:48] Speaker 2: And so I know that's an unusual case, but that's
[39:50] Speaker 2: the way my body responds. So I tell women, you know,
[39:54] Speaker 2: when you start hitting forty, get a baseline.
[39:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, And for men, I mean you.
[39:59] Speaker 2: Could start for year as well, but you know, fifty
[40:02] Speaker 2: is really the benchmark for men. Start really looking at
[40:05] Speaker 2: bone density, muscle quality, where you're storing your muscle or
[40:11] Speaker 2: you're fat. Is it more subcutaneous or visceral, so that
[40:14] Speaker 2: you can start interventions earlier rather than later.
[40:18] Speaker 3: One of the things is really interesting about it, and
[40:19] Speaker 3: probably a lot of people who have never had a
[40:21] Speaker 3: dex that don't know this. They'll tell you the right
[40:22] Speaker 3: down of competiti left arm, your left leg, the right
[40:25] Speaker 3: glue competitor left group glute. Have you got sort of
[40:28] Speaker 3: changes or differences between the two and you can look
[40:30] Speaker 3: at it from period to period. I think they're critical
[40:32] Speaker 3: and they're only they're not expensive. You pay about in Australia,
[40:35] Speaker 3: I think you pay one hundred and fifty bucks or something.
[40:37] Speaker 3: Can I just talk about nutrition, because you know, there's
[40:39] Speaker 3: a lot of stuff at the moment about nutrition, and
[40:43] Speaker 3: one thing in particular is about the the value of
[40:47] Speaker 3: creatine for women especially once again, men have been using
[40:51] Speaker 3: creatine in gyms for a hell of a long time,
[40:53] Speaker 3: maybe too much creating. It was more about I will
[40:56] Speaker 3: build more muscle if I have more creatine. And you
[40:59] Speaker 3: go through a period of owning creating and then you
[41:00] Speaker 3: take it up, you stop it. Then you know, you
[41:02] Speaker 3: go through periodization with it. But now it's become a
[41:06] Speaker 3: thing you take a full briand health and just general
[41:09] Speaker 3: physical health. Could you talk a little bit about creatine
[41:11] Speaker 3: for women.
[41:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean creatine is the most studied supplement.
[41:17] Speaker 2: It has so much really robust peer review behind it.
[41:21] Speaker 2: And the thing about it is it's in every fast
[41:24] Speaker 2: energetics of the body. So if we talk about the
[41:26] Speaker 2: way the body fuels itself, every cellular function in the
[41:28] Speaker 2: body uses creatine. Women don't have as much lean mass
[41:33] Speaker 2: or muscle mass as men, so by that nature, we
[41:35] Speaker 2: have less available creatine. Women tend to eat less creatine
[41:39] Speaker 2: containing foods in general than men, so we have less stores.
[41:43] Speaker 2: If you're a vegan or vegetarian, you definitely have less stores.
[41:47] Speaker 2: So we talk about using a very low dose creatine
[41:51] Speaker 2: monohydrate supplement, maybe three to five grams, so can saturate
[41:55] Speaker 2: your tissues. So what does that mean from a health perspective.
[41:58] Speaker 2: We know that there's a sex difference in things like
[42:01] Speaker 2: IBF and so that means that you have more irrital
[42:04] Speaker 2: bowl syndrome as a woman and more gut issues. If
[42:07] Speaker 2: you start taking creatine, it maintains the integrity of the
[42:11] Speaker 2: intestines and reduces that and some women don't have issues
[42:14] Speaker 2: unless they start taking creatine. We talk about muscle and
[42:17] Speaker 2: muscle function, of course, but creatine is also really important
[42:20] Speaker 2: for bone and bone function. We see it does help
[42:24] Speaker 2: with gut micro the gut microbiome diversity, and we need
[42:28] Speaker 2: that for vitamin production and the gut brain access. Talk
[42:32] Speaker 2: about creating in brain health because the brain is such
[42:35] Speaker 2: an energy hungry organ it uses a lot of creatine
[42:38] Speaker 2: in glucose. So if we are saturating the tissues and
[42:42] Speaker 2: we're providing more creatine for brain function, then we have
[42:46] Speaker 2: less depression and less fatigue. So when we talk about
[42:49] Speaker 2: creatine as a supplement, it's been so well studied, and
[42:53] Speaker 2: now we're having more and more research done specifically on
[42:57] Speaker 2: women in the health space, not the performance in space,
[43:01] Speaker 2: and there have been a couple of reviews looking at
[43:03] Speaker 2: all of that research and the groups that benefit the
[43:06] Speaker 2: most from three to five grams of creating monohydrate a
[43:10] Speaker 2: day are women eighteen to sixty five. And that is
[43:14] Speaker 2: I mean, that's the research. It's like. So if you
[43:16] Speaker 2: are really looking for something to improve just mood, trying
[43:21] Speaker 2: to improve muscle function, gut function, herd function, then I
[43:24] Speaker 2: tell women lean into just starting with a low dose
[43:27] Speaker 2: of creating, not going up to the five times four
[43:31] Speaker 2: grams a day where you're getting twenty grams, there's a
[43:34] Speaker 2: time and a place for that. But that's like shift
[43:36] Speaker 2: workers or people who are chronically jet lagged or having
[43:39] Speaker 2: lots of issues sleeping, because then higher doses of creating
[43:43] Speaker 2: can help in those situations.
[43:44] Speaker 3: Then what about protein, because that's the big conversation when
[43:48] Speaker 3: we keep getting hammered definitely on social media about we
[43:51] Speaker 3: don't have enough protein. And then you know, the general
[43:54] Speaker 3: as I understand the consensus now in the science community,
[43:56] Speaker 3: somewhere between one point eight grams protein per kilogram to
[44:01] Speaker 3: two point two grams of protein per kilogram of weight.
[44:07] Speaker 3: I guess that depends on how active you are and
[44:09] Speaker 3: how much exercise you do, and maybe everybody's different. But
[44:12] Speaker 3: if maybe if you say just two might be easier
[44:14] Speaker 3: two grams. But how important is protein as a resource
[44:20] Speaker 3: and should we be getting it just from our where
[44:23] Speaker 3: do you prefer just get it from a natural foods
[44:26] Speaker 3: or like someone like I'm seventy my age, like I
[44:29] Speaker 3: can't eat these days. I can't need enough food to
[44:33] Speaker 3: get that To reach that number, I way eighty kilos,
[44:36] Speaker 3: So that means I've got to have one hundred and
[44:37] Speaker 3: sixty plus sixty you've got to have it on seventy
[44:39] Speaker 3: six grams of protein, which means I've got to eat
[44:41] Speaker 3: like five steaks or something.
[44:43] Speaker 1: I don't know whatever it is, and I couldn't. I
[44:47] Speaker 1: couldn't do it, you know what I mean? Like, So,
[44:49] Speaker 1: how is it okay to have the supplements? And when?
[44:52] Speaker 3: Should you have them straight after training? Or should I
[44:55] Speaker 3: try to always edit in a natural sauce? Where's a
[44:57] Speaker 3: protein deal?
[44:58] Speaker 1: Sit?
[44:58] Speaker 2: Okay? We think about proteins now having its heyday. We've
[45:02] Speaker 2: heard about fat, we've heard about carbs, and now we're
[45:04] Speaker 2: having protein. And I always like to remind people that
[45:07] Speaker 2: the RDI of protein in most countries is based on
[45:10] Speaker 2: the minimal amount needed to prevent malnutrition. So I'll just
[45:15] Speaker 2: let that sit there. So all these people are arguing,
[45:17] Speaker 2: fifty grams is enough, that's enough. If you're sitting around
[45:21] Speaker 2: doing nothing else except trying to exist, then you start
[45:25] Speaker 2: just breathing, just breathing. We see that when you start
[45:29] Speaker 2: becoming more recreationally active man and woman, that comes up
[45:33] Speaker 2: to one point six grams per kilo. And that's not
[45:36] Speaker 2: even really focused activity, that's not trying to build muscle
[45:39] Speaker 2: that's not trying to train for a marathon. That's just
[45:42] Speaker 2: you're going through your life and you're putting incidental and
[45:44] Speaker 2: structured exercise in because it helps with bone, it helps
[45:48] Speaker 2: with muscle, it helps with satiation, it helps regulate our
[45:52] Speaker 2: appetite hormones. All of these things are really important. We
[45:55] Speaker 2: start training for purpose and we start getting older, we
[45:59] Speaker 2: see that we have an anabolic resistant response to both
[46:03] Speaker 2: exercise and protein for women. When we hear forties for men,
[46:06] Speaker 2: it starts about fifty. So that means no matter how
[46:09] Speaker 2: much training in protein we eat, if we're not eating
[46:12] Speaker 2: appropriately and at the right times, then we're not going
[46:16] Speaker 2: to adapt to the exercise as well as we would
[46:19] Speaker 2: have before that anabolic resistance came in. So this is
[46:23] Speaker 2: where we start leaning into hitting that two to two
[46:27] Speaker 2: point two Graham's per kilo dispersed across the day, and
[46:32] Speaker 2: if we lean into a little bit of Keith Barr's
[46:34] Speaker 2: work on tendons and ligaments, because that becomes a very
[46:37] Speaker 2: important conversation as we start getting older too, that if
[46:41] Speaker 2: we have protein as close to the end of exercise
[46:44] Speaker 2: as we can, then that nutrient uptake is so much better.
[46:48] Speaker 2: And we see that the amino acids for tendons and
[46:51] Speaker 2: ligaments gets absorbed and used a lot better too. Oh wow,
[46:55] Speaker 2: So it's an age factor rather than the exercise component.
[47:00] Speaker 2: That's more important that you increase your protein, and you
[47:03] Speaker 2: have more of an eye on the timing of protein
[47:06] Speaker 2: as we get older. When we talk about sources of protein,
[47:10] Speaker 2: I've been plant based since i was fourteen, but you know,
[47:14] Speaker 2: I've also been in the gym since i was sixteen.
[47:16] Speaker 2: It's very possible to get enough from plant sources. It's
[47:21] Speaker 2: not necessarily ideal. So I always tell people the plant forward,
[47:25] Speaker 2: and you think about protein from all sources, not just
[47:28] Speaker 2: our steaks and or chickens, but also think about etnami,
[47:31] Speaker 2: green peas, sprouted grains, and nuts, seeds. All of those
[47:36] Speaker 2: things can work with the typical sources approtein to give
[47:41] Speaker 2: you a good thirty to fifty grams per meal time
[47:44] Speaker 2: and a place for supplementation. Definitely, there's a reason why
[47:48] Speaker 2: they're really good. Clean way protein and peed protein isolates
[47:52] Speaker 2: out there so that you can use them right after
[47:55] Speaker 2: exercise or first thing in the morning when you're not
[47:57] Speaker 2: hungry but you know you need something. It is a
[48:00] Speaker 2: supplement and you can use it to help boost your
[48:03] Speaker 2: overall protein intake. The thing is we have this confusion
[48:07] Speaker 2: now of collagen protein versus a whole protein of way
[48:11] Speaker 2: isolate or pe protein isolate. Collagen is not a dietary protein.
[48:16] Speaker 2: So you'll see protein waters you got os and you're like, oh,
[48:20] Speaker 2: great protein water, and you look at it and you're like, oh,
[48:23] Speaker 2: it's bovine collagen and it says twenty grands of protein.
[48:27] Speaker 2: It's not the same as if it was a way isolate.
[48:30] Speaker 2: The way isolate is what we think of its protein.
[48:33] Speaker 2: The collagen protein is just a structural protein. It doesn't
[48:36] Speaker 2: go to help with our dietary intake a protein.
[48:40] Speaker 3: Stacey, could you help me out on this because I
[48:41] Speaker 3: see a bit of a It's like two teams so
[48:46] Speaker 3: and I'm not asking you to criticize one or the other,
[48:48] Speaker 3: just to help explain it a little bit to me.
[48:50] Speaker 3: But we got one team on one side, which is
[48:53] Speaker 3: say David Sinclair, who is talking about and even to
[49:02] Speaker 3: a point of reducing the amount of calories not just fasting,
[49:06] Speaker 3: not just intimate fasting or going on days are fasting,
[49:09] Speaker 3: but also during the period when you are eating, perhaps
[49:12] Speaker 3: are taking in less calories because It has a cascade
[49:14] Speaker 3: effect in terms of turning what I don't want to
[49:19] Speaker 3: get weird about it, but am tore off, and then
[49:20] Speaker 3: turning apk on and Schouans and all those other things
[49:23] Speaker 3: that sort of going to fix you up. If you've
[49:25] Speaker 3: got that camp over there makes sense to me, then
[49:28] Speaker 3: I got the Peter Tier camp over here, who say
[49:31] Speaker 3: two point two train your hardest, get enough protein into
[49:33] Speaker 3: your system.
[49:35] Speaker 1: Blah blah blah.
[49:36] Speaker 3: You've got to make sure you have enough fats, carbs,
[49:39] Speaker 3: and protein and minerals and other things too. But then
[49:43] Speaker 3: I get confused which one's right or where.
[49:46] Speaker 2: Do we go? You know what conversation is not on
[49:48] Speaker 2: either camp. There is the exercise conversation right, because if
[49:52] Speaker 2: we think about exercise exercise themselves as a fasting state.
[49:56] Speaker 2: We have an uptick of mtour right after exercise, yes,
[49:59] Speaker 2: because we've had damaged muscles, but over the course of
[50:04] Speaker 2: adaptation it turns it off. Intours and something that stays
[50:07] Speaker 2: on or off it is something that comes on in
[50:10] Speaker 2: responds to a stress of tissue breakdown to be able
[50:13] Speaker 2: to rebuild it. So when we're talking about taking in protein,
[50:15] Speaker 2: if your body doesn't have to rebuild protein or muscle, right,
[50:19] Speaker 2: then it's not going to have a high impact on
[50:21] Speaker 2: intour It'd be a slight uptick, but not a huge impact.
[50:25] Speaker 2: We talk about fasting. This is where we start to
[50:27] Speaker 2: get in a lot of gray area, right because if
[50:30] Speaker 2: we look at the research on fasting, when you start
[50:33] Speaker 2: holding a fast on noon or after you're having circadian shift,
[50:36] Speaker 2: it's more impactful in women than the men because men
[50:38] Speaker 2: have a longer circadian rhythm.
[50:41] Speaker 1: But what's that? What's that mean by the way you
[50:43] Speaker 1: mean between sleep and wait.
[50:45] Speaker 2: So when we talk about a circadian rhythm, for women,
[50:48] Speaker 2: it's a twenty three and a half our cycle that
[50:50] Speaker 2: our body is on, but for men it's more twenty five.
[50:53] Speaker 2: In a bit we say, you know, in general, people
[50:56] Speaker 2: are like, oh, it's a twenty four hour circadian rhythm
[50:58] Speaker 2: of light and dark and the way your body works
[51:00] Speaker 2: in the day versus night. But every hormone and system
[51:04] Speaker 2: is tied to a time clock within that, so we
[51:07] Speaker 2: see appetite hormones are driven by that, or hormone pulses
[51:10] Speaker 2: throughout the day are driven by that. So the two
[51:13] Speaker 2: biggest Ziya guests of controlling circadian rhythm is exposure to
[51:17] Speaker 2: light and when we eat. So if we hold a
[51:20] Speaker 2: fast till noon or after, we're effectively telling our body no,
[51:23] Speaker 2: we're still in a sleeping state, so we don't want
[51:26] Speaker 2: all of our hormone pulses going. So we start to
[51:28] Speaker 2: see dysregulation of appetite. We start seeing more insulin or
[51:33] Speaker 2: leptin resistance, and insulin resistance, we start to see flattening
[51:37] Speaker 2: of testosterone and men, a pbturbance and lutinizing hormone and women,
[51:41] Speaker 2: and the fact that we're having a smaller eating window
[51:45] Speaker 2: is why we are seeing body comp change. But that
[51:48] Speaker 2: doesn't necessarily mean it's positive body comps change because when
[51:51] Speaker 2: we start looking at metabolic effects of holding that fast
[51:54] Speaker 2: so long, it has negative impacts on women as well
[51:57] Speaker 2: as sleep implications because if we are shifting our hormonal
[52:01] Speaker 2: pulses because we're withholding food, then it's also telling melatonin
[52:06] Speaker 2: that it's not supposed to rise and peak when it
[52:08] Speaker 2: should in a normal brain. For our circadian rhythm, which
[52:12] Speaker 2: is around nine PM for women in about ten for men,
[52:15] Speaker 2: it blunts and or doesn't peak at all, so then
[52:18] Speaker 2: we have interrupted sleep. If we have interrupted in poor sleep,
[52:22] Speaker 2: we don't have any metabolic control and we cannot instigate change.
[52:26] Speaker 2: So if we're thinking about what are we doing for
[52:28] Speaker 2: calorie restriction, it's like, let's just make it easy, Okay,
[52:33] Speaker 2: Let's not talk about the two camps and all the
[52:35] Speaker 2: metabolic things that are happening. Let's look at how are
[52:38] Speaker 2: we structuring our day to optimize metabolic health. Let's work
[52:42] Speaker 2: with the way our bodies are designed to work with
[52:45] Speaker 2: its intrinsic clocks. So for women, that means eating something
[52:50] Speaker 2: within a half an hour or so waking up because
[52:53] Speaker 2: you have a normal cortisol awakening response, which is why
[52:57] Speaker 2: we wake up. Women's peak is higher than men's, and
[52:59] Speaker 2: it's tightly tied to appetite hormones. We have something very small.
[53:03] Speaker 2: Then it unties cortisol and garrilan so that they're not
[53:09] Speaker 2: so tightly interwound, so your body can then get on
[53:13] Speaker 2: with its day and have appropriate responses to stress and
[53:17] Speaker 2: hunger cues. For men, it's a little bit longer, like
[53:20] Speaker 2: you could probably get away with not having any food
[53:23] Speaker 2: for a couple of hours after you wake up because
[53:25] Speaker 2: it's not as important because your circading rhythm is longer
[53:29] Speaker 2: and you don't have such a tight tied to cortisol
[53:32] Speaker 2: in your appetite hormones. Then you eat regularly throughout the day,
[53:36] Speaker 2: making sure that you're having protein and fiber at every
[53:39] Speaker 2: eating opportunity. You have dinner, you stop eating when you
[53:43] Speaker 2: finish dinner, so you have about a two to three
[53:45] Speaker 2: hour break before you go to sleep. So then you
[53:48] Speaker 2: end up with a twelve to fourteen hour overnight fast,
[53:52] Speaker 2: which encounters that fasting situation. You have more energy during
[53:56] Speaker 2: the day. If you have more energy during the day,
[53:58] Speaker 2: you also have more control over your hunger queues as
[54:02] Speaker 2: well as what you're reaching for. We see a lot
[54:04] Speaker 2: in the research that if you're holding or skipping breakfast,
[54:07] Speaker 2: you tend to have more cravings for simple carbohydrates in
[54:10] Speaker 2: the afternoon. So this is why we see people are
[54:13] Speaker 2: leaning for the caffeine and the chocolate in the afternoon.
[54:16] Speaker 2: It's because of that dysregulation of appetite hormone. So the
[54:19] Speaker 2: big picture is, let's eat during the day and fuel
[54:22] Speaker 2: for what we are doing during the day, and then
[54:25] Speaker 2: not have anything overnight and let our body do all
[54:28] Speaker 2: the utophagy and reparation it needs to overnight.
[54:31] Speaker 3: I've heard a lot of discussion around understanding you when
[54:39] Speaker 3: you do your blood tests understanding a variety of things,
[54:41] Speaker 3: but one of the important ones in terms of informing
[54:44] Speaker 3: us as to how we eat and how we live
[54:46] Speaker 3: our life, et cetera, is a BOI and it is
[54:52] Speaker 3: and particularly you know, like not making sure, but trying
[54:55] Speaker 3: to find out do you IUE four for example, as
[54:57] Speaker 3: opposed to one of the other ones three or two?
[55:01] Speaker 1: How important is that for thus a bit like decks
[55:03] Speaker 1: of it.
[55:03] Speaker 3: How important is that for us to get baselines about
[55:06] Speaker 3: those sorts of things as to informing us as to
[55:08] Speaker 3: how we should approach our health spend, loss span.
[55:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you have the opportunity of being
[55:14] Speaker 2: able to get that, then that gives you that baseline
[55:16] Speaker 2: to understand what your risk factors are. Right, so we
[55:18] Speaker 2: know that APOE four is a significant risk factor for Alzheimer's,
[55:23] Speaker 2: so then let's do everything to prevent it. Just because
[55:26] Speaker 2: you have that risk factor, it doesn't mean you're going
[55:27] Speaker 2: to develop the disease. So this is when we start
[55:30] Speaker 2: looking at baseline biomarkers and having access to that information,
[55:34] Speaker 2: it informs you which direction to take. Because people sometimes
[55:38] Speaker 2: feel like they have a death sentence when oh my gosh,
[55:41] Speaker 2: my father got Parkinson's that means I'm doomed for it. No,
[55:43] Speaker 2: it doesn't. It means you have a risk factor, but
[55:45] Speaker 2: we have a lot of things that we can do
[55:47] Speaker 2: to help reduce that risk. So that's what these baseline
[55:50] Speaker 2: tests are, and they are important. If you can access
[55:53] Speaker 2: it and get it, then it gives you really good
[55:54] Speaker 2: insight of how to direct your training and nutrition.
[55:57] Speaker 1: Because it's definitely available in Australia. I know that because
[56:01] Speaker 1: I'm an E three to four.
[56:02] Speaker 3: I mean I found out and it's actually helped me
[56:05] Speaker 3: because it sort of helped me work out about sleep
[56:07] Speaker 3: patterns and stuff like that. And I do want to
[56:10] Speaker 3: talk to you finally if you've got a minute or
[56:12] Speaker 3: two left about sleep generally, and lots of people where
[56:18] Speaker 3: I've got a wearable lots of peoplehear them and they
[56:20] Speaker 3: sort of try to calculate you or what they call
[56:23] Speaker 3: restorative sleep, which is in my cases the combination between
[56:27] Speaker 3: ramsleep and slow wave sleep will been in a broader sense,
[56:32] Speaker 3: not every part of slow we sleep.
[56:33] Speaker 1: But what are we trying to achieve here?
[56:36] Speaker 3: Let's say, are we trying to achieve thirty percent of
[56:39] Speaker 3: our total sleep time in restorative sleep?
[56:43] Speaker 1: How important is slow wave sleep compared to rams sleep.
[56:47] Speaker 1: What's the deal?
[56:47] Speaker 3: Should we get in three hours restorative a night? Some
[56:50] Speaker 3: people I get five hours restorative sleep at night, and
[56:52] Speaker 3: I think, no, that's not fair. I don't ever get that.
[56:55] Speaker 3: What are we thinking about here?
[56:57] Speaker 2: This is very individual. Well, first, our wearables are not
[56:59] Speaker 2: since it's enough to actually pick up sleep pases. Yeah,
[57:02] Speaker 2: it just gives you a general estimation of how slow
[57:05] Speaker 2: your heart rate goes and blood flow changes.
[57:07] Speaker 1: Which but it's good for comparisons from month to month.
[57:11] Speaker 2: Yet. Yeah, so under times of high stress, so this
[57:14] Speaker 2: could be exercise training, block stress, lots of travel, could
[57:19] Speaker 2: be work stress. You want to have more reparative sleep
[57:23] Speaker 2: because this is where our brain gets to be repaired.
[57:27] Speaker 2: We see that even lots of interrupted sleep the next day,
[57:29] Speaker 2: you have lots of times where you have attention deficit
[57:32] Speaker 2: disorders where you're like, oh, what was I thinking of?
[57:35] Speaker 2: It's because your brain is now trying to improve the
[57:37] Speaker 2: glymphatic system during the day because it didn't get to
[57:40] Speaker 2: at night, So it's flushing itself in the day, which
[57:42] Speaker 2: is not optimal. So if you know that you are
[57:45] Speaker 2: under a period of high stress or you're going to
[57:47] Speaker 2: go into a period of high stress, getting more deep
[57:51] Speaker 2: reparative sleep is super important. We see that it changes
[57:54] Speaker 2: across seasons. We see more people fall into a deeper
[57:58] Speaker 2: reparative sleep in the winter than in the summer because
[58:02] Speaker 2: of daylight hours. It's not something to be worried about,
[58:05] Speaker 2: but track your own trends. When we're thinking about the
[58:08] Speaker 2: impact of poor quality sleep over time, that's a significant issue.
[58:13] Speaker 2: So if you're seeing poor quality sleep and it's been
[58:15] Speaker 2: three or four months of poor quality sleep, we need
[58:18] Speaker 2: to talk about an intervention, like what is their sleep hygiene?
[58:21] Speaker 2: Have you gotten into a new bad sleep habit? Because
[58:24] Speaker 2: we can effectively have really good sleep patterns, but if
[58:29] Speaker 2: we develop a poor habit, then it will interfere with that.
[58:33] Speaker 2: So what I mean by that is if you've had
[58:35] Speaker 2: a series of interruptions in your nighttime sleep because of
[58:38] Speaker 2: a noise or for some people, a new baby, then
[58:42] Speaker 2: your brain learns that new habit and we have to
[58:44] Speaker 2: unlearn that habit so can get back into its normal
[58:47] Speaker 2: reperative sleep. So there are things like insomnia cognitive behavior
[58:52] Speaker 2: therapy that's very effective. That's down the track, but first
[58:55] Speaker 2: let's look at are we in a cool room do
[58:58] Speaker 2: we not have screens in the room. Do we have
[59:02] Speaker 2: access to dimmer light the hour before we go to sleep?
[59:06] Speaker 2: Are we having ear plugs so that our partner and
[59:09] Speaker 2: small noises don't wake us up? So there are very
[59:12] Speaker 2: small little habits that we can instigate to improve our
[59:15] Speaker 2: sleep environment, which then will improve the sleep architecture.
[59:18] Speaker 3: If you were to rank out of the three sleep exercise, nutrition,
[59:23] Speaker 3: which one is the one you have to really make
[59:27] Speaker 3: sure you don't stuff it up?
[59:28] Speaker 1: Sleep by far?
[59:29] Speaker 2: By far? Yeah, yep. There's still so much research to
[59:32] Speaker 2: be done on why we actually need to sleep. There's
[59:35] Speaker 2: lots of researchs done that shows what happens during sleep
[59:37] Speaker 2: and how it is important for total body reparation and
[59:41] Speaker 2: metabolic control and body comp and cognition and reducing inflammation
[59:46] Speaker 2: and all the things that promote our public burden diseases.
[59:51] Speaker 2: So people I always kind of step back because I
[59:54] Speaker 2: used to be one of these people. I would compromise
[59:56] Speaker 2: sleep so I get in a training session. Especially when
[59:59] Speaker 2: I was racing high level, I was like working, I
[1:00:01] Speaker 2: have to work late, but then I have to get
[1:00:02] Speaker 2: up to get my training in, and I was always
[1:00:05] Speaker 2: a little bit sleep deprived. My training wasn't going where
[1:00:08] Speaker 2: I wanted, The races weren't going where I wanted. I
[1:00:10] Speaker 2: was suffering in work, and I was like, oh, wait
[1:00:11] Speaker 2: a second, it's sleep. So then I started prioritizing sleep
[1:00:14] Speaker 2: and putting parameters around how I'm sleeping, when I'm sleeping,
[1:00:18] Speaker 2: and really getting good sleep, hygiene, and then everything else improved,
[1:00:23] Speaker 2: because we can't show up for other people if we're
[1:00:25] Speaker 2: chronically sleep deprived and inflamed and just not cognitively there
[1:00:30] Speaker 2: from poor sleep.
[1:00:32] Speaker 3: And a lot of people just think that sleep. So
[1:00:34] Speaker 3: I've just got to sleep. I'm going to get to sleep.
[1:00:35] Speaker 3: I'll go to sleep earlier. But other people like you,
[1:00:39] Speaker 3: and I've heard you speak, and by the way, I
[1:00:41] Speaker 3: just want to say, I appreciate, we appreciate what Station
[1:00:45] Speaker 3: seems does for longevity and health span. Thank you, not
[1:00:49] Speaker 3: just for women, but around the world, for everybody, all
[1:00:51] Speaker 3: the people you've spoken to, the way you say it,
[1:00:54] Speaker 3: the research you bring into it, the way you explain it.
[1:00:57] Speaker 1: I wonder what it is that drives you to do this.
[1:01:00] Speaker 1: Why does Sticy want to do this? What is it
[1:01:03] Speaker 1: about it?
[1:01:06] Speaker 2: I grew up all over the world being an army brat,
[1:01:09] Speaker 2: and I've seen so many different opportunities and cultures, and
[1:01:13] Speaker 2: the bottom current is we're all human, right and for me,
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: I want every human to have the opportunity to live
[1:01:20] Speaker 2: the best to their potential. I say that with a
[1:01:24] Speaker 2: grain of salt, because there are some people that I
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: wish would just keel over right now. I think about
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: some of the things that are happening in my home country.
[1:01:34] Speaker 2: But for the most part, the passion and drive is
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: to create an equal playing field because we see so
[1:01:40] Speaker 2: many discrepancies, and part of it is lack of access
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: to information, lack of money for proper healthcare. So the
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: more prevention and information that we can get out for everybody,
[1:01:53] Speaker 2: the better potential people have for their own life, because
[1:01:56] Speaker 2: no one wants to face a life of being chronic
[1:02:00] Speaker 2: pain and illness if they had the opportunity to prevent that.
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: So the more that we can get it out there
[1:02:06] Speaker 2: and the more we level the playing field, the more
[1:02:09] Speaker 2: impassioned I am and empathetic I am with how we
[1:02:12] Speaker 2: are going to survive our lives as well as take
[1:02:15] Speaker 2: care of the people come after us, as well as
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: our planet.
[1:02:19] Speaker 1: And where do you think we are now? In the
[1:02:22] Speaker 1: in the curve?
[1:02:23] Speaker 3: Because you know, it's been fairly steep in terms of
[1:02:26] Speaker 3: over the last five years in terms of learning more
[1:02:28] Speaker 3: about these sorts of things. We have more and more
[1:02:29] Speaker 3: people like yourself telling us about them. But at the
[1:02:31] Speaker 3: same time, we rely on you to learn about these things,
[1:02:35] Speaker 3: you know, through research, et cetera. Where do you think
[1:02:37] Speaker 3: we are we halfway up the up the hill or
[1:02:40] Speaker 3: we know we need that we're just touching the touching
[1:02:43] Speaker 3: the edges At the moment.
[1:02:44] Speaker 2: I think for general purposes, we're almost at the top
[1:02:49] Speaker 2: where we have enough information that we can disseminate and dispel.
[1:02:53] Speaker 2: It's like the sprinkles and the icing on the cake
[1:02:55] Speaker 2: that I'm very interested. And it's like when we start
[1:02:58] Speaker 2: taking the nuances, we don't have a lot of research
[1:03:00] Speaker 2: and the nuances like the extras, yeah, like the ectress.
[1:03:03] Speaker 2: It's like, if we are to look at peptides that
[1:03:05] Speaker 2: are making such a big thing right now, right It's like,
[1:03:08] Speaker 2: I want to know what the research is, if it's
[1:03:10] Speaker 2: really accessible, and does it work and does it improve
[1:03:13] Speaker 2: certain parameters for someone like you or someone like me
[1:03:16] Speaker 2: or someone like my husband. Which one should we use
[1:03:18] Speaker 2: and is it really something that we should lean into
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: or should we spend our money and time in something
[1:03:24] Speaker 2: we know that works like a Mega three's. So those
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: are the nuances that we don't have captured yet and
[1:03:30] Speaker 2: that's what excites me about the research. But for the
[1:03:33] Speaker 2: general pillars of how do we take care of ourselves?
[1:03:36] Speaker 2: Have skeletal longevity to grab the catchphrase that my friend
[1:03:40] Speaker 2: vonder Wright has coined of you know, having good tendons, ligaments, bone, muscle,
[1:03:45] Speaker 2: cognitive function to be able to live our lives to
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: the fullest, however long that is is something that I
[1:03:51] Speaker 2: think we have a pretty good handle on.
[1:03:54] Speaker 3: Well, I think that's a great way to finish this off,
[1:03:57] Speaker 3: Doctor Stacy, seems so proviach you on the show.
[1:04:00] Speaker 1: That was wonderful. I really enjoyed it and I know
[1:04:03] Speaker 1: audience is going to absolutely love this.
[1:04:04] Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me. It's been fun.

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