Female-Specific Research, Longevity & Strength Training: Why Every Woman Belongs in the Weight Room | Dr. Stacy Sims & Selene Yeager

26:50Selene Yeager:It's all helpful. I had a really great, great conversation with Belinda Beck. Do you know shoes yeah yeah um awesome she the liftmore study investigator and just so much about like how you need your bends to bone then bones to bend a little bit you know to stimulate the growth and like like just exactly what heavy load does to the bones is so fascinating i could have geeked out for hours that that is such a hard like for me when i first heard that i was like how does the bone bend like how like a barbell sister you put enough weight on it it just bends a little bit it's just like it is fascinating because you just don't you don't think that like how does the bone actually bend but man i mean again thankful for for you stacy but also vonda and all of these vonda with her femur and really talking about how strong bones are are formed and kept that we're not missing the message there as well.

27:58No. No, she's awesome on that. Because I was looking at all of us that were speaking at the conference, and it's like we all have our own niche, and we all overlap. And sometimes we all get pitted against each other, but we're all effectively saying the same thing just from a different angle. It's like Vonda is definitely orthopedic bone with some muscle. I'm, you know, let's look at exercise, exercise, stress, and then the hormone conversation. And we have Jessica and Mary Claire, that's more hormone and then exercise in it. But we all in the thread of things all agree. It's just, yeah. And, and it's interesting that when you hear us all together on the stage, we still have to say we all agree because people just keep taking little bits here and there what they want to hear and then try to pit each other against each other.

28:49Selene Yeager:Yeah. And you might have, which is, we're all humans. I mean, you might have slightly different nuanced thoughts on something like a hormone therapy than Mary Claire. I mean, even though you overlap in the Venn diagram, she may have some thoughts that you're like, I'm not really there. And you may have some thoughts where she's like, I'm not really there. Exactly. That's okay. It's fine. That's like, that's okay. Yep. I think that's the important point too, the venn diagram because when you look at it is there one person in your life that you agree 100 with not even myself i can agree with my dog maybe because he doesn't really talk yeah and so everyone i mean and i think that's that's our job i know for me in these groups um they always like the nutrient timing will come up and I always refer back to Abby Smith Ryan's work and all of these things and it's like to the consumer it might be well this person says this this person says that as the educators we aren't confused we're we know well okay well in this context this this is how it goes and in this context this might work but really interesting just to kind of look at the different audiences and how our audiences are different, Celine, but they're also a lot the same.

30:12Oh, yeah, there's overlap, for sure. Have you heard Keith Barr talk about the nutrient timing part? No. Oh, really interesting because, you know, he's not in our world per se. He's all ligament and tendon and exercise. He was there yesterday too, but I've listened to a few of his podcasts and that question always comes up. He's like, when you're younger, maybe not. But as you get older, the exercise stimulus is what really allows adaptation. So why are you not going to feed that stimulus as soon as possible? And the protein is really important for tendon and ligaments. And I think the conversation about nutrient timing comes into all about muscle growth.

30:51Where when we talk about it, we're not talking about muscle growth per se. We're talking about let's shut down the breakdown effect so that we can start adaptations. and those adaptations need fuel. So let's get it as close to the end of exercise as possible, especially as we get older, because we're more resistant to that regrowth and that anabolic stimulus. So he is someone that's outside of our circles, explains it well. I'm like, we need more of that being out there too. Yeah, it's interesting. And all of the big rocks, I mean, as we always say, Celine, we've had a conversation about this on a podcast.

31:30Like we all know that somebody coming in as a baby, if they were learning violin, you're not going to teach them Bach. You're going to teach them the foundations and the basics. And that is start eating a little bit better. Start fueling with protein. Start adding in some weights. Start building. Make some habits. And then you get to build on to the next level. And then after that, then you can build on to the next level. And then there you are where we're all at with our training, where we have the foundation, we have the base, and now we can really play around with different things. And it all will pretty much work because we have our bodies have that muscle memory and they have that conditioning to allow us to live an athlete's life.

32:23I mean, I've never been a pro you guys have but for me I I mean, I I can pretty much do whatever I want. Not great. I mean, you should have seen me at the yoga, the Costa Rica yoga. that was everyone there was just nailing all of these poses I was the one wait a second I practice my balance all the time I don't know how to do any of these moves but you can really get through a lot when you have the cardio base and you have the resistance

32:55Selene Yeager:that the strength training base you can do what you want you can say yes to a lot of things in your life. And I think that that is what is so important is that if you don't nurture those things, your life becomes smaller. And they talked about that too, right? They talked about that for brain health. Like don't let your life become small. And I thought that is so important because it's so easy to recede and to let your life become smaller, especially if you haven't stayed physically strong. There's such a connection between being able and strong and having that self-efficacy and that confidence to engaging in your life more broadly.

33:37Selene Yeager:And it also gives you more energy. Your mitochondria is better. It's physically giving you more energy, right? Yeah. I lament that maybe two years ago, I could be fit enough to do whatever. If someone's like, let's go for this this two hour trial run i could do that let's go do this let's go to this adventure two years ago sure but the past two years with injuries and travel i'm like i have to hesitate and i hate that so that's like the motivation to really get back into being strong and balance and proprioception and all the things that i've lost it's so frustrating having that limitation and i think about people who are limited by the fact that they haven't had the kinds of lives that we've had.

34:19It's like how small and unfortunate they have to experience life because they can't just go do whatever they want and have these adventures. We've got a mountain to climb next year for my big 50th. Celine, you in?

34:35Selene Yeager:I am in. I am in. We'll be riding up a volcano. Yes. I was on the side of the road multiple times while Stacey and her friends were all up there. I literally have never stopped every five feet. I was, I gotta take a rest. And I would just get off the fight. It was the hardest thing that I've ever done. But one of the things that we had that was harder is we had rented bikes. And I feel like that was the, that was a few months before we had launched power and my life. I don't even remember those months. I don't remember, But I know I wasn't on my bike training. So I am bringing my own bike because rented bikes.

35:22They're good. They're not good for riding after that.

35:27Selene Yeager:Too hard for a legendary hardest world climb. So we get extra kudos because we were on rented bikes. Extra. Yeah. And very little practice for myself. Well, that was a very humbling, hard, but also quite fun event. Very casual event. So if we move on to the fundraising event that you invited us to in San Francisco. I just have to say it's typical Haley for me to show up. I can't open my phone because I'm like, I know they gave directions and said to go in the backyard. And there's two ways. We're going to go this way. And I can hear Stacey speaking. And then we come up right behind Stacey speaking.

36:21And everyone's looking at us. It doesn't matter. It's great. Hi. Welcome to the party. So that was quite fun. But Stacey, tell us about that. Yeah. So I've been sitting on this idea for quite a few years because of watching the frustration of the gender data gap growing and my frustration with algorithms and AI and seeing how now AI is really perturbing the information that women get because it's this echo chamber of male data. And I was talking with my friend Amber, who's also an American based in New Zealand, and she's in the tech. And she's like, we've got to do something about this. So we created this company that has a nonprofit arm that's research-oriented, and Mamed just put money into that.

37:07So we have research grants, and we also have a data repository from different companies, de-identified data. So what we're trying to do is enhance the funding and availability of data for people to do research specifically on women. But the big thing is we've vetted over 100 ,000 journal articles for methods and results and the data that comes from that. And it's not just me vetting it because I have so many friends who are top in their field in academia. Each one of them have come in and have vetted the methods and everything. So we've created a large language model that's based just on female physiology.

37:50And the way that it works is like it's a correction factor right now. So Aura or WUP or someone freaks out because you ovulated and all of a sudden your temperature goes up and your heart rate variability goes down and says you're not recovered. But our language model will come in and say, well, actually, it's because you ovulated and this is completely normal. These are the steps that you can do from evidence that will allow you to level the playing field. So we know there's sleep disruption. These are the things that you can do from evidence that will help you sleep better. So it's about empowering women with actual data.

38:25And then the research arm will come back in and feed the language model so it keeps learning. Because we want to fight back against all the stuff that's happening with AI and all the misinformation. Because in the bell curve of information, who gets left out? The outliers. Who are the outliers? Primarily women and our ethnic and racial diversities. Like everything is being left out. So we're encompassing lived experiences. We're encompassing all the true physiological, biological data that has been vetted and is real to teach this language model. Yeah, so that's the company Collective X. And I'm very excited of where it's going and what's happening because I'm like, we're going to get into women's sport so that all the platforms of the coaches are reading, that the data there actually informs them how their athlete is responding.

39:17it also helps women understand their bodies more get a touch points into the wearables get touch points into eventually into health care and everything so yeah it's it's my vision and and want to be able to have every woman served so yeah i love that it's a powerhouse team too that you have yeah put together there yeah bringing in more so so who who was on the team Is it Dorothy from Aura? Yes, so she's an advisor. So Dora Kilroy's an advisor. And she's from Aura. We have Mel... Mel Strong. Wrong. Long time friend of mine.

39:59Selene Yeager:I've known her since we were in our 20s. So she's an advisor as well. We have Ann Bradley. She's a lawyer, corporate lawyer. She's an advisor. And then we have James Sr. who came over from Meta. And he's our CTO. So he's boots on the ground, creating the architecture and changing it almost every day because things move so quickly. And then from the research side of things, we have Claire Bodenhorst, who was a PI with me in New Zealand. Now she's moved to Perth to head up a hospital system for research. So she's head of research. And then those of us that are vectors, it's like I'm there. Abby Smith Ryan is there.

40:37Bond is there. Steven Chung's there. yeah he's great yeah holly thorpe who's a sociologist i love her too yep yeah on a duffy so she's coaching and and psychology um who else do we have we have jen wagner coming in we have emily krauss um wow there's yeah there's a whole like it's a top tier because we all have been in it for so long and we've connected we all have the same idea like we want to work together to be able to really make a difference rather than having these silos of voices that keep infighting that create confusion. Well, I loved meeting, well, I met Naomi. I loved meeting Naomi from Momentus, but Dorothy was, I went up to her.

41:28I had a compliment her on her beautiful arms. I feel like Stacy always gets arms too. She's like, well, I've been doing the Power Happens program. Oh, that's right. I know you are. Yeah. I was like, okay, well, the arms are looking smashing and she's just cute. She's really adorable. So if we talk about the AI, doesn't that, the AI can't get behind paid research, right? Like the firewall, like it can't get access to those certain like PubMed articles that aren't available to everyone? Can AI get that? We are in negotiations with some of the journal publishing houses to then be able to access their behind the paywall.

42:16So we already have an agreement with Sage Journals and we're in conversation with a couple of others so that we can actually get to those journal articles to be able to bring that data in. But for like the general like Claude or ChetGTP or ConsenSys, it's all just what's on PubMed. So it's a language model over PubMed. So they don't actually have the availability to get all the research that's there, which is another problem because again, it's just the echo chamber, right? And Amber, you met Amber Taylor, one of my co-founders. She's like this thing with open evidence, that's the touch point for physicians.

42:53A couple of months ago, it was saying no one should ever use menopause hormone therapy because it causes breast cancer it's like old data old data it's been disproven oh that's a problem that's a problem right but if you've ever like seen anything written by claude it's through that male lens and always puts them in first it's like we've got to fight that right now it's like we're at the cusp of new scientific design and we need to get in there to have women at the table to change what's going on otherwise it's going to perpetuate this gender data gap and misinformation and misogyny and everything because that's how those models are being formed and developed and i every day i wake up and i'm like oh my gosh we got we're too late we've got to move faster yeah well it's happening i mean ai is happening at an alarming rate but getting the right research in there is yeah collective x yes here we go it is a collective it's not a stacy sims thing it's a collective no that's awesome and it's such a good team

44:02Selene Yeager:it's such a good team thanks thanks yeah talk a little bit about the study you are embarking on with brain health yeah so um ruth mcfadden is is the kind of the head of women's research at the Cleveland Clinic. And she's also good friends with Maria Shriver. And I was on Maria's podcast earlier, oh no, end of last year. And we connected really on brain health because her MOSH program she has with her son where they make the MOSH bars. And she's also really behind the women's Alzheimer's movement. And they have grants. And Ruth and I and a couple other people wrote a grant to look at strength training in Alzheimer's.

44:45So we're looking at, can we effectively design a program that's going to attenuate the onset of dementia or slow the rate of development for those with the APOE4 gene early onset, and then those who are at home with a caregiver, creating a program that helps the caregiver and the person with dementia. So we know that if you're doing intensity through your strength training, it affects prefrontal cortex. It increases neural conductivity. It also helps with brain metabolism. So if we know these things inherently, we want to put it in the population that needs to be served. Yeah. That's cool. That's amazing.

45:25Thanks. So how long does that study take from A to Z? Yeah. We have a, it's stepwise. First, we have a focus group because we want to see what the barriers are, right? We want to see the attitudes towards strength training, resistance training, what is it so that we can design an adequate program that will address those barriers. So we get all the focus groups done in the first six to eight months. Then we design a program for each of the groups. So we can have the one-on-ones, then we have a group fitness class and we have the ones at home so that we can have those touch points and the availability of getting the data across the board.

46:03And then we'll be able to, to publish and explain what happened. It's amazing. And that's just one other studies coming out of the collective. Yeah. Yeah. Well that we have, uh, we have not allocated the grant that Momentus has given us yet. Uh, and so that starts the 1st of June when people start applying and And the way that it works, I've taken a book out of, I know this is going to be a fighting where it's really out of the Women's Health Initiative. The way they get a lot of their research is you can apply to use the data points or you can propose a study. And you have to be mentored through all of that to make sure that the methods are sound, the statistical rationale is sound.

46:50And that's kind of how we're doing it. So you propose a research project and you're mentored by one of the vector leads to make sure that the methods is going to give true value for women data because we want to put your research outcomes back into the language model. And then once you've done that a few times, you know the methods and you have the rights to access the data that we have in our data repository. So it's a kind of mentoring program, especially if we have younger academics, and also a way to get funding without having to go through university overheads. Trying to reinvent the system because the baseline is broken and we want to create a new baseline.

47:30quite exciting though as we have all been in the space you two a lot longer than me um but to watch it where we are the generation that's changing the conversation right now that's going to be in the history books and what younger women come up and have such an easier time and hopefully that just keeps getting easier and easier. But I always say that in these groups, like these women that are lifting Celine for the first time and having these massive aha moments, and you can see the confidence building in them, they are changing the trajectory of their life for the first time. And most of these women have watched their parents or their grandparents at the later stages of their life and seen how the slippery slope of just watching the decline there and there.

48:28Now we're, we have all of this information. And while sometimes it might be confusing for the consumer, we have all of the information our parents did not have. They didn't know about creatine. They didn't know about protein. They didn't know about strength training. And we have it all right now. It's a really exciting time to be alive. I know that for some women, they think it's confusing. and I just want to pull back and say, listen, you have all of this information. You really can't go wrong if you're doing 60 % of it.

49:01Selene Yeager:Totally. Just like get engaged, get the basics and take it from there. I mean, there's no, you don't need to complicate it. So one of my friends, Kelsey Bailey, she's a rockstar dietician and she tries to explain it where, you know, you go and you follow a recipe for a cake kind of half-assed and it comes out lopsided and burnt and you're like, I'm going to try to make it better by putting buttercream on and make a beautiful icing, but then the icing melts off and it still looks like a lopsided cake. So it's like using that analogy, just follow the recipe, get consistent, right? And then your cake's going to come out.

49:37And then you can think about what kind of beautiful buttercream of your hot or cold contrast therapies, your peptides, all that stuff that's out there, maybe that could be the sprinkle on top of the buttercream, right? But let's first get the recipe. Let's get the consistency to bake a beautiful cake. Yes. Well, are we allowed to talk about a project that you two are doing or is that under wraps? I don't know.

50:08Selene Yeager:Are we? I think we're allowed to talk about it, aren't we? I mean, we're doing another book. I mean, I think that's what I was going for. I didn't know. Maybe two. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. And any hints there? The one that we're working on right now is longevity and active women, because we know that there's all these epigenetic changes that happen with consistent exercise. And if you're an endurance athlete and you've always been an endurance athlete, what's that projection towards your health span versus if you've only been a strength athlete or a power athlete? And trying to tease those out so that women can say, oh, well, I'm an endurance athlete and I can see the benefit if I put in some high intensity and some strength training, or I've just been a power athlete, maybe I need to put these in so that I can get these outcomes for a greater health span.

50:58We start off with all the sex differences and how we got to this point and we see like selene was really got me thinking about heart and the way the heart remodels so we dug in and found like men's hearts remodeled differently from women's under chronic exercise this is why we see v-tac and afib and a lot of stuff in male endurance athletes in their mid-40s onwards but for women they'll have an anomaly and they're told oh you need to sit out and you can't do any kind of exercise because you have this arrhythmia when actually it's just the way their heart's remodeled and it's being compared against male data.

51:34So we're trying to tease that out so that women can actually get the good picture of what's happened to their bodies as they've been exercising across the years. Amazing. And for those of you, I'm going to assume that the majority of women listening to this podcast know Celine, but if you don't, I would say you need to follow her. And Celine has been over the last two years, if I can think of one person that has been my voice of reason

52:05Selene Yeager:my husband would just die to hear that it's Celine so Celine you have written books for how many experts my god I mean I have authored co-authored or contributed to well over 30 at this point in my career because I started in 1994 so it's been a long time yeah yeah well it is I it's an honor to know you because it's fascinating I've read a lot of these books of the experts that you're behind a lot of that so I love it I love I mean it's just I learn a lot and I like I like bringing ideas into the world and it's just it's always been it's just what I do I don't know what else I'd do if I didn't do that and watching how the trends have changed and come back and changed again so much i mean it's so crazy like when we were talking about nutrient timing i'm like i wrote about that in 1998 you know i mean we like a lot of these ideas aren't aren't super new yeah yeah it's it's just been i i have such an interesting perspective to watch how the conversation about everything, you know, whether it's low carb, high carb, no carb, eggs, fat, like all of it, just watching how the conversation evolves and all the voices that come in and the powers that be and how things get polarized.

53:34Selene Yeager:And it's just so many times I'm like, I've seen this movie before. I know how it ends, you know, and it's just. Well, that's why I would say that you're the voice of reason, because anytime I'm, I'll come to you and I'll say, well, Celine, what do you think about this? and you have said i have seen every conversation i've you can find a research article to back up whatever you want with every yep we can oh well yeah i mean i you can you really you really can yeah yeah so interesting well as we wrap this up ladies anything any parting words of what we want to leave this podcast. I mean, the women listening know, like, it's strength training, but just keep, if you're new and you're a little bit struggling or whatever, I mean, just even a couple times a week, whatever you can do, it really makes a difference.

54:33Selene Yeager:I just, I think doing a dedicated strength training practice is the number one thing that's really going to change the trajectory of your health span and your longevity. I very much believe that. Yeah, I do too. And thinking about quality over quantity, because I think people get so, oh, I have to do an hour and a half in the gym. Oh my God, you don't. No, without being in and out, very good with the quality of the work that you are doing. That's how you get benefit. Yeah. Because I don't love it. I mean, I love how I feel after I'm done. but I would in a million years rather be running on the trail riding my bike like I am not a gym person I don't like the gym I don't you know it's not my thing but I am not no offense I mean I love you I like I I would I love it I love it but I but the but I do crave the activity because I love how it makes me feel and I can feel and the benefits are concrete and they're real and they're actually pretty quick.

55:38Selene Yeager:Newbies get that newbie strength that's so great, that neuromuscular, you know, those newbie gains, you can't beat. Yeah. Yeah. I read this really interesting study. It was really cool where they're looking at the neuron responses to strength training in young versus old and in novice lifters. So strength training and they both had the same response. So you think when you're old and this like 65 to 85 year old men and women that you can't develop that neural pattern that and that strength of contraction you can't your body is very willing to you know be malleable and and adapt you just have to make sure that you put the load on but then that you have the fear factor because we still have that in the health care practitioners if you're old you shouldn't left you're going to get injured you should just use a machine you're going to get injured and and hurt if you don't.

56:33Selene Yeager:When you don't lift, everything hurts. I think about that all the time. When I am lifting and doing things regularly, nothing hurts. I don't hurt. My knees never hurt when I run. Nothing hurts. If I don't do that, if I don't keep my body strong and durable and all that, things fall apart real fast. Really, really fast. Yeah. I read an editorial and there's a group of people that are really trying to push to change that narrative in the older population. Yeah, we really need to. Because we have the data to show that it doesn't matter what age you are, it's all relative to your age and ability. But if you lift with intensity and intent, you get so many gains from brain, muscle, heart, bone, all of those things.

57:22Yeah. And I'm going to give a little shout out to the women that feel like they're left out if they have an anatomical reason or an injury or something that I have osteoarthritis, I can't, like, this hurts me. Do what you can. Push yourself where you're able to and make that program work for you. You don't need permission to, and you don't need to feel bad. There are so many workarounds. And these are the questions that I get all the time. Well, I can't do this. I have this injury. Great. There's 9 million other exercises that you can do. And if you can't do a back squat because it hurts your spine, if you have a gym, do all of these other things where you can push that doesn't hurt the spine, but then find ways that you can really make your program your own.

58:21There's a whole wide range of getting benefits. And there's, I would say, good, better, best. The best is what we're putting into these programs and the advice that we're giving for this optimization here. Then there's good that works. Think of all the women that aren't even doing that. And then there, or there's better, and then there's good. Anywhere on that spectrum, if you are doing something, Ideally, if you can do all of it, you should do all of it. You should be pushing yourself. You should be, the body is adaptable and really making that change. But if for whatever reason you have these limitations, great.

59:02Work with the framework that you have and get the benefits that way as well. Everyone deserves to be in the weights room. Absolutely. Period, the end. Amen. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. well ladies this has been i would go on and on but i have a meeting so i'm gonna i'm kind of hungry so it's later here yeah i hope we get to get together in person again yes and if not for my 50th birthday next year i'm making it mandatory

59:38Selene Yeager:that you both are there. Okay. And we're doing the mountains. So just everyone prep right now. Celine can do it tomorrow and not even have it be hard. So Stacey will be right after her and I'll eventually get there on my own. But anyways, Stacey, I just want to end this by saying, as we always do, thank you for being a leader in this space and getting the conversation. And as I've been interviewing these younger women coming up the ranks, everyone will give you the credit that you deserve for putting menopause on the map and having such a big part in these communications and conversations where when we go to a conference like Longevity and you're the headliner, 2 ,000 women are showing up without even a second thought.

1:00:34and the majority of them are there for you. Jane Fonda was the bonus, but I think that as you have been in the limelight and had all sorts of angles thrown at you, you are such a pioneer in the space and you deserve to have the accolades that come with that. So thank you for being the voice that we didn't have for the last X amount of years. So thank you, ladies. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your expertise. Celine, you know I just adore you.

1:01:08Selene Yeager:Right back at you. We have been through it. Mutual admiration society. Yeah. So take care, ladies. Thanks so much for joining me. Yes. Awesome. Good to see you guys. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening, everyone. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and sharing the BodyPod with your friends.

1:01:35Thank you.