Women Are Not Small Men! Why Fitness Advice Is Failing Half the Population | Dr. Stacy Sims

21:10But also we see like neuron connectivity or the way that the brain is wired starts to change when we're getting older as well as having hormone shift, which causes anxiety and depression. But we see in some of the research that came out even last month that if you're doing heavier load lifting, which is that power range where you're doing heavy loads, 80 % of what you think you can do, five or six reps, then it stimulates neural conductivity improvement in the prefrontal cortex, which is primarily driving cognition. And then you have other changes in other parts of the brain that help. But all of this helps attenuate or slow dementia and Alzheimer's risks.

21:49So slow down.

21:51Dr. Mark Hyman:So you just want everybody to hear what you just said. What you're basically saying is that by lifting heavy weights for women, it slows down Alzheimer's risk. Yes. Okay. And the reason for that is I might stop you occasionally because like you're used to like a encyclopedia and I want to make sure people understand what you're saying. Because I'm so excited about it. If you don't mind, I'll just kind of like pause occasionally to translate. Yeah. Because I'm like, part of the problem is we have brain metabolism change. So we know that glucose is not as effective as a brain fuel. As insulin resistance comes up, glucose isn't as available for other systems of the body.

22:27And we want to increase neuroplasticity. So that means how our neurons are forming and firing and talking to each other. And if we create a new motor pattern or we need a stimulus to recruit more muscle fibers, that's that neuroconductivity. And that's what you get at the very low end and heavy strength training. It's a neuroconductivity. and that's the important factor in the resistance training concept i'm not telling people who've never done resistance training to immediately start on that end any resistance training is great you don't want to start with 100 pound weights no start with body weight work your way up with the eye in two or three years of getting down to the heavier but this is honestly i i feel

23:05Dr. Mark Hyman:like i know a lot of stuff but i never heard this before oh my god i never heard that you by by lifting heavy weights you're increasing your brain connectivity i know exercise is good for your brain in general, but this particular piece is new to me. So I'm sure it's new to everybody out there listening. Yeah. It was a randomized controlled trial that came out out of a hundred thousand people that was just published from the UK last month. How forward it's really fascinating because they looked at heavy lifting versus moderate intensity, which is your body weight and your lighter loads and longer rep ranges.

23:39So you're 10 to 15s. And it was only the heavy in that affected prefrontal cortex. The moderate weight and the higher reps affected other areas of the brain, which is great. It's a good improvement, right? Because you're still affecting neural connectivity. But for the concern of cognition, we need that prefrontal cortex increased connectivity and functionality. So when we're looking at what are we doing to optimize health, that's one of the first things I say.

24:03Dr. Mark Hyman:But is there any understanding of the timing of this? In other words, if you start like when you're 40, obviously it's better, but can you start as late as 60? Yeah. And is it going to achieve the same benefits? We don't know how robust it is, but that randomized controlled trial was looking at people who were 60 plus. I'm asking for a friend because I didn't start strength training until I was 59. You're good. You're excellent. You're protecting your brain. We're all going to be having Zimmer frame races, not because of our brain and our bodies, because of our joints. So it doesn't matter when you start.

24:34We say start when you can. It's never too late to start. And we're having more and more research come out in 70, 80-year-old individuals that are showing the heavier rep range, which is relative to what you can lift, improves not only bone and lean mass, but also brain health.

24:48Dr. Mark Hyman:That's amazing. It's like the one thing that everyone should be doing. And I come from a massive endurance cardio background. And I've always had strength training as the undercurrent, right? But now all the research is just pointing to how important it is in today's society where we don't move that much. That we have to do the push-pull motions. and put our bodies under load, not necessarily cardiovascular load, but actual load. Yeah. I'm going to, on the video version of this podcast, I'm going to give my team my picture because I had, I was like a runner. I would, I was running like five miles a day for, from 14 until like 55 or six.

25:21Dr. Mark Hyman:Right. And I was running my bike a hundred miles a day or 40 miles or 30 miles. And I, I, and I was lean, but I wasn't string training. And then I started when I was 59 and then I had a comparison picture of me at 42 maybe and at 62 and it's like you can't believe it it's like yeah and I I never would have thought that was possible but you know it's never too late no it's never too late I mean I was full endurance too I ran 19 marathons before I was 20 I did Ironman I did Xterra I did bike racing and I had string training on the undercurrent but didn't to let people know I was doing it because it wasn't appropriate for a woman.

26:01Dr. Mark Hyman:I just wasn't doing it. I was telling myself lies. I've been doing yoga. That's like strength training. Yeah, I've heard that too. But you probably see this too. We get Dexas and it's women that look healthy because they look lean and they're runners and stuff. Yeah. But you get the Dexa and they have a high amount of visceral fat compared to what they should be. And their bone density is relatively low. And they're like, I don't understand. I eat clean. I run. I do all this stuff. It's like you're not strength training and you're not eating enough. because if you're not eating enough, then you're not supplying your body with the fuel that it needs to rebuild.

26:34So it's tapping into bone, of course, because it's part of the aging, but also the stress of exercise without enough fuel. And that higher visceral fat is because there's a change in our lipids in a conversation between the liver and the fatty acids that are circulating that esterifies them to then be stored as visceral fat.

26:53Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. So we can fix that. So basically what you're saying is, you know, women who look lean, are what we call skinny fat. Or we used to call it toffee, thin on the outside, fat on the inside. And you can tell that by doing a special kind of very, very low radiation x-ray called the DEXA scan that measures bone density for osteoporosis, but also measures fat in your body and muscle and the distribution, right? Because a lot of these scales, you can't really tell the distribution, these bioimpedance scales. And you can kind of get a rough sense, but your arms and legs could be like you know, 10, 15%, but your belly could be 30%.

27:30Dr. Mark Hyman:Right. And that's not good. And you may look thin. Right. And that actually leads to some of the same cardiometabolic risks of heart attack and diabetes, stroke as being overweight. Right. You're under lean and over fat. Exactly. And I often give an example because I'll get women who come in and we get the DEXA, we get their bloods and their LDL has suddenly shot up and they've never had problems with cholesterol before. It's like, well, yeah, that's a dysfunction of estrogen because estrogen kind of helps with cholesterol and risk factors. And when you start losing that, if you are not eating enough and you're not doing exercise stress to help the body understand what's going on, then you're going to have this increased negative lipid profile as well as poor bones, not really fantastic muscle quality.

28:17And we see this increase in visceral fat.

28:19Dr. Mark Hyman:So let's sort of dig in on two bits of this. One is the food and one is the exercise. Yeah. Because those are independent variables that we have control over. We can't control our genes. We can't control our parents. We can't control our height, our age. But these are things we can control. So on the exercise front, is there a difference in what women should be doing when they're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60? And if so, what is it? And can you unpack that for us? and what's the right mix of cardio, HIIT training or interval training and strength training and what kind of strength training? Because I'm hearing there's like body weight, there's light weight, there's heavy weights.

28:58Dr. Mark Hyman:So can you kind of help us really unpack all that? So when we're in our 20s and early 30s, pretty lucky. Our reproductive years, we can kind of get away with everything. I really impress women when they're in their 20s and 30s to pick up strength training. And it doesn't matter what rep range you're doing, just as long as you are doing strength training and have an eye to being muscle-centric. And you can do variations of high intensity, low intensity. Your body recovers really well because we have the benefit of our sex hormones. Women also have the benefit of having more endurance fibers. So we already have a robust amount of mitochondria, and we have more proteins for mitochondria respiration, better anti-oxidation responses.

29:37And these are inherent sex differences. This doesn't matter if you have estrogen and progesterone or not. So we're already really endurance. We need to work on our fast twitch. We need to do a little bit of intensity and strength training. When you start to get into your...

29:50Dr. Mark Hyman:So you can get away with a lot. Yeah, you can. It's the bottom of your 20s. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you're like all the high rocks people are like in their mid to late 20s. You're like, yeah, when I was back in my 20s, I probably picked that up too, but now not so much. But when you start to get into your late 30s and start having more anovulatory cycles, which means that you aren't producing as much progesterone because you're not ovulating and you have a a change in your estrogen progesterone ratios. This is when we start to see a little bit of dysfunction in how you're training. Just so people understand this.

30:21Dr. Mark Hyman:So, you know, when you're a guy, you make sperm your whole life. When you're a woman, you're born with a certain number of eggs and it starts declining from the day you're born until you go through menopause. And as you go through 30s and 40s, you start to have less eggs and you may not ovulate every cycle, which means you have estrogen, but not progesterone. Correct. And when we start seeing more and more of those anovulatory cycles, people don't necessarily know that they're anovulatory because they'll still have a bleed. And this is why when we - You might bleed heavier. Right. You might have heavier bleeding because progesterone stabilizes the uterus.

30:57Dr. Mark Hyman:And then when you have just estrogen without the progesterone, you get like clots and heavy bleeding and more cramps and all that. Right. And that's what happens is when we get in their thirties, yeah. Right. And they're like, what's going on? So when we talk about like - And then they get anemia. Yeah, and then they get an email. So they'll talk about like menstrual cycle phase-based training. It's like, no, let's take that off the table because that's one of the conversations. You train according to your menstrual cycle phase. And you're saying that's not a thing? We can't say that because, one, there's not enough robust evidence for a whole human to be able to do that.

31:28It's too generalizable because we don't know when someone ovulates. Every woman's cycle is variations of when they ovulate. So it's more, we know you roughly have X amount of days in your cycle, see how you feel, and you can tweak your training accordingly. Because if you know on day 23 you always feel really shitty, then you're not going to go do a hard session. So when you have reproductive years, that's what you do. So when you start getting into your mid to late 30s and you start seeing these inherent changes, it's kind of an awareness factor of, oh, what's going on? So people start to feel a little bit less strong.

32:02They start to feel a little bit less like themselves. and they're starting to go, what's going? Like, am I not training right? And unfortunately with the diet culture, most people say, oh, I need to increase my training and decrease my food because I'm starting to put on belly fat or I'm not responding as well. So they start to really kind of get into more of a low energy state. See this all the time, especially in recreational female athletes. And when we get into a low energy state, that means that we don't have enough food coming in to support daily life as well as support training. So then we get a compounding variable of now they're going to put on more body fat and have more issues sleeping and definitely not recover well.

32:44So it becomes a negative feedback system.

32:46Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. And that becomes the worry. So then when they get into their 40s and really start to have issues, that plus the sympathetic drive of perimenopause causes a complexity of issues that then they go to their physician and the physician is like, okay maybe it's because you're in this period of your life where you're highly stressed you're not taking care of yourself do you exercise yeah i actually keep doing it but they don't realize that the exercise that they're doing isn't appropriate for their bodies when it's going through this phase so what should they be doing in that phase yeah so when we look from a sex difference not a sex hormone standpoint women are already super super endurant by the nature of being xx so this long slow zone two stuff is not something they need to do all the time we look at We need to now find an external stress that's going to create a signal in the body that's going to cause responses the same as estrogen, progesterone used to do.

33:42So what I mean by that is we need to have really super high intensity work and resistance training because we want to signal to the body with high intensity work that we can use glucose effectively.

33:53Dr. Mark Hyman:Kind of like sprinting. Yeah. That's what they call high intensity interval training. Yeah. Because it causes what we call epigenetic change. So we know that it's a locking key. So high-intensity work is the key to unlock the cells, to open them up, to allow glucose to come in without insulin. So it's a GLUT4 protein that translocates, opens up, and we see that insulin isn't needed for glucose to come in. I just want to stop you there because this is such an important point you're talking about and most people don't understand it. People think that in order to get your blood sugar or glucose into your cells, you need insulin.

34:25Dr. Mark Hyman:But the muscle is a unique tissue and can actually absorb glucose without insulin, right? Yes, exactly. Especially in the post-exercise state because now— And that's right. And the way you get that is by having healthy, good muscle. Right. Exactly. Right. So, I mean, one of the things that diabetics do is like a 10-minute walk after a meal because it helps stabilize blood glucose. and that's what you can do when you do high intensity, you get a permanent change in the muscle to have the ability to have more glute-4 proteins translocate to improve insulin sensitivity because now you have other ways of getting glucose in without so much reliance on insulin.

35:04So it makes the body more sensitive to the insulin.

35:06Dr. Mark Hyman:So it's a double benefit. You get insulin-independent uptake of sugar or glucose in your muscles and you don't have to make as much insulin in order to drive the glucose into the cells. And when you don't have to make as much insulin, that's a good thing because insulin is a fat storage hormone and it makes you store belly fat, which you were talking about. Right. So it's, you know, like convoluted. Yeah, it's a lot to unpack. Because then I raise a doctor, a PhD like you or me. Like I just think - Unpack it, it's good. I'm just helping out here. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. That's your job. And then the other thing about high intensity work is if we go back to brain and brain metabolism, We really do see a change in glucose reliance of brain fuel and tissue because it's not as effective in the brain when we start to get in perimenopause.

35:55And we see that change in brain metabolism is also a risk factor for amyloid and tau plaques or Alzheimer's plaques. So if we're doing high intensity and producing lactate, lactate is a preferred fuel for the brain and the heart. So if your body's exposed to lactate, it starts to use lactate and not having such a reliance on glucose, which improves brain metabolism and, again, reduces the risk factor for developing tau and amyloid plaques.

36:22Dr. Mark Hyman:So just people, what is that amyloid tau? That's basically the sticky proteins that cause dementia and Alzheimer's. That's what we know is the downstream effect of whatever the insult is. It's not that amyloid causes Alzheimer's. It's that it's the result of some inflammatory or unhealthy process in the brain. It's kind of the body's band-aid. But what you're saying is the right type of exercise will actually attenuate it. Prevent the development of these plaques and tangles in the brain. I wouldn't use so much prevention. Slows the rate if you have a risk for it. So you could actually have a few but not develop symptoms.

37:02There are a lot of people who have a variation of amyloid and tau plaques that don't have dementia symptoms, which is what we're after. Like you could have them as long as you don't have symptoms, right? So we're looking at ways to improve brain metabolism, reduce inflammation. So if we were producing lactate, then we're doing high-intensity work. That's great metabolism for the brain. But also when you do high-intensity, you get a really strong post-exercise anti-inflammatory response because the cells have been inflamed from such high-intensity work. And the body's reading it as a signal of, oh gosh, we have to be able to rebuild quickly in case that stress comes back.

37:36So it increases anti-oxidation, it increases anti-inflammatory responses. We see a boost of growth hormone, we see a boost of testosterone post-exercise. So when we hear all this stuff, how a perimenopausal woman shouldn't do high-intensity work, it's like, hold on, let's define high-intensity because it's very beneficial if you do it correctly. But if you're doing a high-intensity class that is at all these gyms where they're like, let's go after the perimenopausal women. We have these booty burns. We have spin. We have orange theory. We have F45. All of those. I know.

38:07Dr. Mark Hyman:I've been there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's moderate intensity. It's not truly high intensity because we've all been conditioned to get out of one of those classes feeling sweaty and completely smashed, thinking it was a good workout. But for true high intensity, you can't hold the intensity for as long as these classes are. No, you can only do it for 30 seconds to a minute, right? Yeah. So that's the sprint. And when we look at the Norwegian four by four, that's also a type of intensity, right? So four minutes at about 80%. And those four minutes are super slow. You're like, oh my God, hurry up. I can do it.

38:39I can do it. And then the four minutes recovery go too fast.

38:42Dr. Mark Hyman:I want to loop back on something you said because it's also so important. You kind of said that the effect of the exercise and the post-exercise effect is to reduce inflammation in the brain. And I don't know if you know the work of Rudy Tansy and others who really looked at the subtype of the population with some weird genetic variant where they have a brain full of amyloid and full of tangles and plaque and tau, but they have normal cognition. And they have a weird mutation that prevents inflammation, which is really wild. Yeah. So without inflammation, bottom line, Alzheimer's is an inflammation disease of the brain.

39:23Dr. Mark Hyman:So is heart disease, inflammation of the blood vessels. That's kind of what causes it. Right, right. So we look at all the ways that we can reduce inflammation. I mean, that's why estrogen or estradiol internally is so protective because it's an anti-inflammatory agent. So when we start losing it, the body becomes more inflamed and systemically driven. And we see that we have more of the sympathetic drive, which is also that hype. People feel tired but wired. It drives even more inflammation. Let's look at how we can reduce that. People are like, oh, high intensity. I can't do that. It's going to make me more tired.

39:55But they do it properly and like, oh, I feel amazing. I have this kind of euphoria. What is doing it properly? So we have high intensity interval training. And the subset of that is our sprint interval training. So we look at high intensity interval training. This is about 80 % of your max when you're doing the intervals. So it could be one minute on, one minute off. And that one minute on is eight out of a one to 10. When you're looking at 10 being max and one being you're sitting on the couch. and then that one minute off is just really super cruisy so that you can do the next one minute at that 80%.

40:25Or that's kind of how you start. And then ideally we're holding it for three to four minutes and then you have variable recovery, however fit you are. Because if we can hold it for three to four minutes.

40:35Dr. Mark Hyman:You mean you do like four times? Like a minute, one minute off, one minute on, like twice? That's four minutes? No. So if we're doing one minute on, one minute off, we try to build that up to a total of 10 to 15 minutes. So you end up doing five to seven sets of the one minute on. And then if we're looking at producing more lactate, then we do longer intervals with a shorter recovery as you get more tolerance to it. So this could be three to four minutes at 80 percent and two to four minutes recovery, depending on how you're feeling and how fit you're getting. So the other way to think about it is in the class situation, especially something like CrossFit or some of these other classes where they have every minute on the minute.

41:15where you have one minute that you might be doing burpees. And then right into the next minute, you're doing walking lunges with a weight. And then the third minute, you might be doing box jumps. And then the fourth minute - Right, the recovery is switching from minute to minute until the very last minute is a full minute off. So you have four minutes of hard work, one minute off, and then you can repeat that a couple of times. That's true on high intensity. And then the sprint interval is very short and effective. So this is your subset of high intensity where it's 20 to 30 seconds as hard as you possibly can go.

41:46Dr. Mark Hyman:Like you're running from a tiger. Yeah, exactly. Or a shark if you're in the ocean. Yeah. And then it's a full two to three minutes recovery. And I have a lot of women go, why do I need to recover that long? It's like, because if you don't recover that long, your central nervous system and your energy systems have not recovered enough to then be able to do that same intensity at that running from a tiger speed that you need to do. Because if you are consistently doing 30 seconds and then a minute off, 30 seconds, a minute off, you are failing to hit that high intensity. How many times do that?

42:19No more than five. You work your way up. Some people are like, oh, no problem, I'm going to do five. And after two, they're like, oh my God, I can't do anymore.

42:25Dr. Mark Hyman:So like a minute and then four minutes off and then another minute and doing that five times. Yeah, and then if you are doing a separate session of sprint interval training, because they're two different sessions, so you can have a high intensity interval training as one session. And then when you're short on time or you want more of your epigenetic change for glucose, then you're looking at doing the sprint interval stuff. That's a completely separate session. It might take 10 minutes total. Or you have a warm-up, you do two to three sets of the 30 seconds on, two to three minutes off, and you're done.

42:57Dr. Mark Hyman:Okay, so that's the cardio part. Yeah. And that you're saying women should start when? In their 30s, 40s? You could start it earlier, but it's really beneficial when you start getting in your late 30s, early 40s. And continue out through your life? Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure speeds are going to reduce, but not that much. Not that much. Right. Yeah. And that's what interesting research is. Like most of us have this belief that as you get older, you decline and become more frail and slower and so forth. Right. But I remember reading this book, I think it was a Deepak Chopra book, like maybe 30 years or more ago, where he talked about the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, where they had a belief in the culture that the runners, because they would run long distances, 100 miles that the third 20 year olds are good 30 or better 40 better and the 60 year olds were the best runners i love that and they actually were and then they went down there's a group from harvard went down and studied their bo2 max and their pulmonary fitness and they actually were better and i think we've seen we've seen this in you know these isolated people who were like i started you know at 65 rowing or i started biking at you know 65 and i'm now 105 and i'm like Like I'm better.

44:05Yeah.

44:05Dr. Mark Hyman:And it's like, so the body is quite amazing that we think it is going to fail, but actually it can continue if you continue to take care of it. Right. I remember meeting this guy, it was my stepfather's Sheva, which is like the, after the funeral. And he was 95 years old and he was like running around like a spring chicken. And I'm like, he looks so fed and sharp. And I'm like, what are you doing? He says, well, whatever I did yesterday, I do today. If I did singles tennis yesterday, I do single tennis today. And I'm like, that was a great lesson for me. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So that's the cardio part.

44:39Dr. Mark Hyman:What about the strength part? And how do women think about that? So strength training is scary for a lot of women, especially in this age group, because we didn't really grow up with being gym centric, right? It hasn't been kosher for women to have muscles or to be in the gym during strength training. Jane Fonda Aerobics. Yeah. Yeah. Who's actually here at this conference, we're both speaking. I am. For years, my diet and my fitness were pretty dialed in, and yet I still felt like something was missing, especially during the darker months, and light was the variable I struggled to get right. And Chorus, the makers of Oyo, have spent years and millions of research and development to solve this.

45:14Dr. Mark Hyman:They didn't just build a light bulb. They figured out how to bring the sun indoors. Back by more than 530 patents in Nobel-level science, Oyo by Chorus removes stimulating blue wavelengths at night so your body can do what it was designed to do, rest and recover. And when your circadian rhythm resets, everything improves. Your sleep deepens, your energy sharpens, even your immune system responds. I've seen what happens when people fix their light. They don't just sleep better. They feel clearer, more grounded, and more alive. If you're making one change this year that touches everything, start with your light.

45:45Dr. Mark Hyman:Learn more at chorus.com slash drhymen and enjoy 15 % off their newest product, Oyo Sphere, with the code hymensphere15. That's K-O-R-R-U-S dot com slash sphere and use the code hymensphere15. People often assume I love cooking because I'm a doctor and focused on food as medicine. But the truth is I love cooking because it's creative, it's grounding, and it connects you to what you're eating. In fact, last night I cooked one of my favorite recipes, our Mediterranean lemon chicken soup. It's simple, nourishing, and it's built around whole anti-inflammatory ingredients. Nothing complicated, just real food prepared well.

46:22Dr. Mark Hyman:Cooking isn't about talent. It's about confidence. And confidence comes from having the tools that actually work. And that's why I use Made in Cookware. The heat distribution is incredibly even, whether I'm sautéing aromatics for soup or simmering broth. Made in creates professional quality, chef-trusted cookware that's designed for the home cook. It makes the process seamless. And when your cookware performs well, you're not worrying about hot spots or uneven cooking. You're focused on flavor and nourishment. Try it today. Visit madeincookware.com and use the code Hyman10 for 10 % off your order.

46:54Wait till I get to interview her tomorrow, and I'm going to dig into that. It's a very interesting way it came about.

46:59Dr. Mark Hyman:Oh. I won't tell everyone on the podcast. Okay. So when we think about strength training, and because people have been so conditioned to walking around with their pink dumbbells and thinking that's strength training, it's really hard to get women to understand that that's not what we mean by strength training. Pink five-pound dumbbells? I know. the ones on the back of the peloton where you're like trying to ride at the same time now that's metabolic cardiovascular work and when we look at strength training gym intimidation is real like sometimes i get gym intimidation when i go to a new place it's very real i know i i'm like i go to the gym and i'm like have my own little workout thing my house and i was in benis california and i went to gold's gym and it's like oh my god like it's like arnold Schwarzenegger, Muscle Beach, like everybody's like humongous and probably on so many anabolic steroids.

47:50Dr. Mark Hyman:And they have like videos of Arnold flexing in his prime on the video screens going while you're trying to, I'm like, and I'm, you know, I'm fairly muscular, but I'm, I'm 66 and I'm like looking at myself. I'm like, I feel like a 98 pound weakling here, you know? I was like, I need to leave. No, no, but I, I stayed, I go at six in the morning and just got to do it. And trying to do it. Yeah. I like trying to find off hours, but then that's not even great. Cause and everyone's looking at you. You're like, what are you doing on the lifting platform? But yeah, because gym intimidation is real, I don't want to like tell every woman, you have to go to the gym.

48:21So we start with wherever they are in their journey. It could be you 10 minutes a week where you wake up and you do a body weight circuit, right? And then as you get stronger in your body weights, you put a front pack of a backpack on, not back because if you're doing a squat, you don't want to lean forward. So if you put weight in a front pack, then it teaches you how to squat upright and use your glutes. so there's ways of like improving your technique while adding load and then we know that isolation is killer so if you have a friend who's also interested well there's lots of apps out there that are really powerful in getting women connected and actually have proper programming to improve from going body weight and lightweight to dumbbells to lifting a bar so there's different ways of doing it if you want to join a crossfit gym that's great because they'll teach you stuff If you want to join a proper gym with a personal trainer, that's fine too.

49:15But I think the mistake that people have is not having a plan and relying on other people to tell them what to do. We need a periodized plan wherever you are in your journey. So if you're just starting with body weight, let's look at what that first 6 to 12 weeks is so that we can progressively overload you and get you comfortable in those movements. And then we can add some load. If you are resistance trained, it's really hard to get gains. So how are you going to change up what you're doing so you can keep getting gains? If you're somewhere in the middle and you're used to doing eight to 10 reps, well, don't change your program per se, but let's add more weight and reduce the reps.

49:50So it's looking, I can't give a general.

49:52Dr. Mark Hyman:Do you need a trainer to do this or how do you get started? Because it's like, I'm like, you know, I mean, honestly, I was so intimidated. I had to get a trainer because I didn't want to hurt myself. I was scared and I didn't want to just do something stupid. Yeah, that's very real. A lot of women are very afraid of getting hurt. That's why they don't go and do heavier weights. I work with a few people that have really fantastic apps who've written together. And so the program is designed that way so that you can go into the gym with the app, see the videos, get instructions to understand how to do it with video queuing.

50:23You can, like in New Zealand, we have playgrounds that have like tires that you can do tire flips with your friends. We have outdoor classes. So people are there to tell you what to do. It's really finding your community that's going to help you. And part of it also leans into isolation is a killer and a demotivator.

50:42Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, not isolating muscles, but social isolation. Social isolation, yeah. Social isolation is a killer of motivation, and we know that it's not very good for anybody. So if you have a buddy, it makes it fun. It makes it sustainable. And then you have ownership in what you're doing. This is amazing. Okay, so I think, is there anything else we want to share about strength training or fitness training before we jump to nutrition? Just get started. For a lot of people in our society, like I was asked the other day about, you know, why do I have to do all the stuff that you're talking about when we see all these people who are a hundred and they never did any of that stuff?

51:21Dr. Mark Hyman:Right. Right. Well, they, they lived in a way where they had to do this stuff. Exactly. So I brought up the example of my grandmother who lived to be 106. And she grew up on a farm and then she moved into the city with my grandfather. He had his own business. She was running around doing the gardening, the house cleaning, looking after her mother-in-law, like always busy, lifting, moving, that kind of stuff. And that was the lifestyle of the people who are now in their 90s and 100s. But our lifestyle now is not like that. Yeah. In my book, The Young Forever, I did some research and I went to Icaria, or Icaria, however you say it, in Greece, it's one of the blue zones.

51:55Dr. Mark Hyman:And I met this couple, he was like 97 she was like 87 and in the side of this sort of hill mountain and she had like the most extensive like i wouldn't call it a garden it was a farm there were fruit trees it was animals there was like so much food she was growing and they and and she was like walking up and i couldn't keep up with her she was 87 years old and you know told me what she was doing having to lift stuff and move stuff and take care of the whole thing and i was like wow you know and And if that had happened in our country, people would be like, oh, wait, wait, no, don't lift that. I'll get that for you.

52:31Right.

52:31Dr. Mark Hyman:Right. Because we're so – there was an editorial that came out a couple of weeks ago that was talking specifically to healthcare providers and to PTs that we need to stop the rhetoric of old is frail. Yeah. We need to stop pushing the 10 to 20 rep range of strength training. We need to really look at challenging the body because it can handle it. Yeah. We know – But you have to be careful with your tendons and ligaments. Yes, definitely. Because if you're not slowly building up. Right. Exactly. I noticed that for myself when I started. I kind of overdid it because my muscles could do it, but my tendons weren't ready.

53:02Dr. Mark Hyman:So then now I can do like, you know, double the weights. Right. But I don't have the pain. Exactly. So that's part of the whole periodized program, right? But if you never. Periodized means just like phases of training, like over time, like doing different things in different weeks, like a graded increase in strength training. Right. So one, you don't get bored, and two, you keep increasing load without getting injured, and your body recovers properly. And are there good resources for people that want to jump in on this? Yeah. So there's a woman called The Betty Rocker, and she's really good if you want to get started with body weight stuff.

53:35And she has some really good perimenopausal, menopausal programs. If you're looking to get into lifting, Vonda Wright has a program with Haley that's Learn to Lift. and then if you're already lifting and really wanting to optimize then you can go into Haley's Power Happens programs which I helped her um devise or devise and write great we'll put all those in

53:58Dr. Mark Hyman:the in the show notes links and everything um let's talk about nutrition yeah because you know I think people are confused and and you know there's all this sort of hype about protein there's intermittent fasting there's do you eat before exercise only after exercise like what what should people be thinking about and how do we, you know, how do we start to think about that? Yeah. I always pull it back now to help kind of clear up all the confusion of chronobiology. So what are we doing for our circadian rhythm? And we know that women's circadian rhythm is different from men's. So if we're looking at even our cortisol peak, our cortisol awakening response, so that's how our cortisol comes up, women have a higher peak than men and it's tightly tied to appetite hormone.

54:42So we know that when cortisol in the morning comes up, we also have an increase in what we call acylated ghrelin, which is our active form of our hunger hormone. We also have an equivalent rise in peptide YY, which is a satiation hormone. But if we don't eat within an hour of waking up, there's dysregulation of those hormones. So as we go through the day, we start to feel more cravings for simple carbohydrates. We get what I call the wall lean because we don't move as much incidentally throughout the day, start really feeling tired and hangry about four or five, no matter if you've eaten a little bit later in the day.

55:20And then dinner is a little bit uncontrollable, where you're like snacking before dinner, and then you have dinner, and then an hour later you feel hungry, so you're eating something before bed. And you've effectively a shift because you're eating in the wrong times. So regardless of the intermittent fasting, the keto, whatever it is, let's first go back to basics. Let's look how the body optimizes hormone pulse, how it optimizes melatonin peak to sleep well, how it optimizes how it repairs itself. It's all in the circadian rhythm. So if we eat during the day and try to front load our calories more towards the beginning and middle of the day, then when we get to the evening, we're not as starving.

56:01so we can make wiser choices at dinner. And then we aren't wanting to have snacks after dinner, which then improves sleep. So I tell women, if you're having really horrible sleep and issues sleeping, it starts in the morning, like when you wake up, and if you have food within the first hour or not. So we want to drop that cortisol. We want to stimulate the hypothalamus to say, yep, there's some food coming in so we can have some more control of ghrelin and leptin so that it pulses properly throughout the day. And then your body is able to have more of an even blood sugar throughout the day.

56:36Dr. Mark Hyman:I think that's important. And what I think about intermittent fasting, I think for women it can be challenging because of the reason you're saying. I like to think about it on the back end. I like to think about it as not eating after dinner. Right. So if you eat dinner at 6 and you wake up at 7 and you eat at 8, that's a 14-hour fast. Exactly. So that's necessary. We want to have at least a 12-hour break in our bodies to allow our bodies to repair, heal, and do autophagy and all the cleanup stuff. But it doesn't have to be this 16-hour thing. It doesn't have to be like waiting until noon to eat.

57:12Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, that's a bad idea for women. Have you seen the research about early versus late fast break? So there's been some population research looking that for those individuals, both in women and men, but more robust responses in women, who break their fast by eight in the morning, and then they finish their daily intake by 5 p.m., that they do have metabolic control and all the things that you think about. I mean, it's just, I wrote, my first book was called Ultra Metabolism, and I wrote a chapter there called The Sumo Wrestler Diet. Ah. And the joke was, you know, how do you have small little Japanese men become these enormous 300 plus pound guys?

57:51Dr. Mark Hyman:Well, they have a science in how they do that. They basically feed in this massive food called chankonabe, which is like a giant stew of all kinds of rice and pork and this and that. It's not processed food, but it's like a lot of food. And then they make them go take a nap. And then they do the same thing at the end of the day for dinner, and then they make them go to sleep. So basically, if you eat before you go to sleep, it's all going to store and you're not going to burn it. Right. And so think of, I would sort of flip the intermittent fasting to be on the back end, like on the night before and not eating and snacking at night.

58:28Dr. Mark Hyman:So that's the best way to do that is to front load your food so you're not starving at the end of the day. Right. And so I explained the difference between intermittent fasting and time-restricted eating. What you and I are talking about is technically time-restricted eating. Because when you start talking about intermittent fasting, that's when people are like, oh, I'm not going to eat till 11 or 12. And then I'm only going to eat till 4 or 5 in that window. One, you're not going to get the micronutrients you need or the fiber that you need. You get a whole bunch of dysregulation. So let's just not even go there.

58:56Dr. Mark Hyman:This is a great take home for people. So if you're a woman and probably I would say anybody, you want to front load your calorie restriction, which is after dinner. And don't eat after dinner. Yeah. And have an earlier dinner if you can. You're going to sleep better. You're going to feel better. Your metabolism is going to be better. You're going to probably lose more weight. You're going to have a better time and you're going to feel better. Yeah. Now let's talk about protein. Yes. So protein is the thing. It used to be low fat, then it was low carb, then it was high fiber. Now it's like high protein.

59:28Dr. Mark Hyman:Like what's the deal? I think we're running out of things to be high or low in. I know. I'm wondering what the next thing's going to be. Initially, I was really happy that protein was getting its heyday because it has been underutilized. Yeah. It's the only, by the way, it's the only macronutrient that we need in large amounts. Exactly. Like fat, essential fatty acids we need in small amounts, like gram amounts, like even milligram amounts. Carbohydrates, we have no actual essential carbohydrates. Correct. But protein, we have a requirement for a fairly large amount of amino acids and protein every day.

1:00:05Right. And I always start protein conversations with reminding people that the RDA is a representation of the lowest amount of protein that you need to prevent malnutrition.

1:00:15Dr. Mark Hyman:Yes. It is not optimal. And if we are looking for optimal, we have to dig into the most recent research that shows that between 1.6 and 2 grams per kilogram of body weight is ideal. So that is about that 0.8 to 1 gram per pound per day. So if you're 150 pounds, it's 150 grams or maybe 130 or 120 to 150 grams of protein. And then as you get older, you become more anabolically resistant, meaning that you can't build tissue and use it very well, to protein and resistance training. So if we are going to try to build strength and lean mass, we have to be on the upper end of protein. And the timing of that is very important.

1:00:53So when I just listened to this fantastic lecture. Can you stop?

1:00:57Dr. Mark Hyman:Because people just heard anabolic resistance. They probably know what that means. Basically, when you're young, you have what we call trophic hormones. You have a lot of hormones that are helping you keep and build muscle. When you get older, they change. And your muscles change. and you need more protein and more strength training just to tread water. Right. I often say I'm a living example because every time I travel out of the country and I'm gone for a month or so, I lose about three kilos of muscle. I know. It's a pain in the ass. And it's really hard to get back. I went to the gym this morning.

1:01:27Dr. Mark Hyman:I try to get to the gym every day when I'm traveling, but sometimes I can't. And I don't have my blender and I can't do my whey protein smoothies. And I can't. I'm like, okay, I have two eggs, but I need like six eggs. I'm like. I know. You go down to the breakfast bar, you're like, Like all the eggs in your bag, you're like, I didn't take them off. Yeah, it's really hard. And so when people push back on the protein and the strength training, I'm like, it is really, really difficult when you get into your 40s and beyond as a woman and in your 50s and beyond as a man to build and maintain your lean mass.

1:01:55And lean mass isn't just muscle. It's also bone. We know protein is really important for bone as well. And when we look at the stimulus for it, not a lot of the education out there is for the right stimulus to build bone and maintain muscle. So for looking at strength training, we know the rep ranges and everything for strength training. And for bone, it's not walking. Yes, strength training can help, but we need to do hard landing jump training. So we need that multidirectional ground reactive force to go up through the whole skeleton to actually stimulate bone growth and density. So when we're looking at protein, it's necessary to help with that too.

1:02:29So as we get older, we need to err on the upper side. And like I was saying, I listened to this fantastic lecture by Keith Barr, who is tendon and protein guy, molecular researcher out of California. And he was saying, yeah, this whole conversation about post-exercise eating is really interesting because most of it's been done on young men and some young women. And so there really isn't a window. I was like, yeah, of course. But as you get older, it's more important.

1:02:59Dr. Mark Hyman:Have a win one or two hours after you work out. He says even less. Less. Because if you are thinking about what you're trying to drive when you're exercising, you're driving signals to break tissue down. And the post-exercise response is to help repair that. To repair, you need nutrition. So if you're delaying that, then you're kind of muting those signals for reparation. So he really suggests that as you get older in your mid-40s for women and mid-50s for men, that you really try to get that nutrition as close to the end of exercise as possible. Let me ask you this because this is something I just don't know.

1:03:35Dr. Mark Hyman:I mean, I talked to Don Lehman, who's a protein expert. Yeah. And my understanding was if you are well-trained, like if you're starting out, for sure, that's true. Yeah. If you're well-trained, you do resistance training regularly, you have muscle, that it doesn't matter so much as to the timing. But what you're saying is different. It is different, yeah. And so when we're looking at all the studies that are promoting, there's no real difference. And we're looking at resistance training and resistance trained individuals. And you could have 100 grams of protein and that doesn't matter when you have it, as long as you have it throughout the day.

1:04:07Because Luke Van Loon put out one where it was the barbecue diet where he loaded people up with 100 grams of protein post-exercise and you were still having protein uptake for 24 hours after. Again, all done on men, younger men. So when we're really looking at the aging factor of muscle and tendon, we want to use exercise as a signal and we need nutrition to help with that signaling. So that's the angle that a lot of us in this field are like, we're not looking at younger people who have the ability to repair without necessarily having a big wallop of food afterwards. words. We're looking at how do we optimize women and men who are aging and still putting in the effort and the work that if you're not fueling to help with those exercise signals, then you're reducing the response.

1:04:54Dr. Mark Hyman:So bottom line is if you're older and getting older, 40s, 50s, 60s, whatever, when you strength train, make sure you have something within a half an hour to an hour at the most. Yeah. Right. Like a whey protein shake or a piece of chicken or six eggs or some amount And does the amount of matter that times it 30, 40, 50 grams? Because you can't eat a gram per pound of protein in one meal. No, no. I wouldn't recommend that. We see that for older women, it's 35 to 40 grams. And for older men, it's 25 to 30 grams. Okay. More for women. Yeah. Because we have more of an anabolic resistance to the protein.

1:05:30Abby Smith-Ryan did some really interesting work of pre and post-exercise. And she found that for women who had 10 to 15 grams of protein before exercise, you still had the capability of accelerating the post-exercise signals because you had more amino acids circulating. So if you know that you can't eat after exercise, if you have it beforehand, it still helps.

1:05:52Dr. Mark Hyman:And so let's talk about the beforehand. Because should you exercise fasted or fed? And if you are fed, how much? Because I know I can't really eat too much before exercise. I get like sluggish and nauseous and I can't do it. So tell me about that. It's okay for you, but not so great for women. Women should have something before. And when we look at the reason we look at like energy availability, so we know that men can pretty much get as low as 15 calories per kilogram of body weight without having dysfunction. For women, it is 35. So there's a big discrepancy right there. So we look at every eating opportunity.

1:06:31We know that if women have something before exercise, that they improve the signaling of the post-exercise responses because they aren't producing as much of the breakdown hormones, your catecholamines that help with muscle contraction and fueling and stuff. so your body I wouldn't say is more relaxed but it's not as highly stressed during exercise so it can hit intensities it needs to it can do what it needs to do it can increase the signaling for post-exercise responses especially if it's cardiovascular if it's strength training there's a little bit more of a leeway because it's not as metabolically heavy as cardiovascular training but if you're going to do a weight training circuit then you do need to yeah I mean

1:07:12Dr. Mark Hyman:I might do a circle. I'm like going, my heart rate's up. Yeah, exactly. Wow. And I tell people it's not a lot. You don't have to think about having a full meal. I mean, there's a lot of us that are part of the 5 a.m. club. And the last thing in the world you want to do is get up at 3.30 to have a full meal before you go training at 5.30. Right. Like, no. It's like I am infamous, you know, on the internet about protein coffee, right? So I love coffee and I'm not going to not have it. What's a protein coffee? I know. So I, people always ask me what I had. I'm like, I do a double espresso at night and I put it in the fridge.

1:07:44But I put it in the fridge with almond milk and a scoop of protein and I stir it up. And then that's my latte in the morning. And I'm drinking it as I'm going out the door to the gym or to the pool.

1:07:53Dr. Mark Hyman:So you put like whey protein in your almond milk. And then I pour the espresso in. So it's like a cold protein latte first thing in the morning. Oh. Don't ever try to do it hot because the protein gets all gluggy. Oh, so it's like a, it's like an iced coffee. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's a, that's a noose to use. Yeah. And then when you're traveling, it's easy, right? Because you might have a coffee maker in your room, or maybe you can get a coffee and put your protein powder in, and then you're like, okay, good to go. And then you have your real breakfast when you get home. And you travel with protein powder?

1:08:23Dr. Mark Hyman:I do. I knew it. I travel with protein powder and creatine, and then I order groceries to get sent to the hotel or wherever I'm staying. I got meat sticks. I got the amount of meat sticks in my bag. Oh, yeah. And I have creatine. Yeah. And I'm like, it's tough, though, man. It is very hard. And I have to like, and then my suitcase is heavy because I got this little portable blender. Sometimes I get, it's like. I choose blender or French press. And I always bring the French press. So what are the nutrition mistakes that women are making mostly now? And they're listening to all the fad diets. And they're listening to the rhetoric that's on social media.

1:08:57And they're not really paying attention to, okay, who am I? How do I respond? When am I hungry? I've retrained women, so many, so many women to listen to hunger cues. Because we've been conditioned not to. We're like, oh, well, I've been told that if I delay food, it's good for me. I should have lemon water, hot lemon water when I first wake up. I shouldn't have coffee. I shouldn't delay my breakfast. And then they get into the whole circadian disruption and they're not sleeping.

1:09:22Dr. Mark Hyman:It's like, okay, well, let's reset. Yeah, because if you aren't eating, we know that your body really responds to food and day and night to look at controlling your circadian rhythm. So if you're waking up and one, you're not looking at light, two, you're not eating, then your body's like, am I supposed to be up? And we see that it effectively phase shifts. So then your melatonin that starts to rise at 9 o 'clock for women and 10 o 'clock for men, you miss the boat. You don't get that. You get a blunting of that. So women should eat in the morning and not do this lemon water thing and delay their breakfast.

1:09:58Correct. And try to look at the light.

1:09:59Dr. Mark Hyman:And by the way, you mentioned people listening to nutritionists on the internet or in social media. 40 % of them are paid by big food companies. I know. To provide misinformation and to confuse people on purpose. Correct. And sell something. I know. It's actually criminal. And sell something. Yeah. To fix it. That's why I'm like, I don't partner with anybody. So what do you think about the protein Cheerios and Dunkin' Donuts, Oh, my God. And the Starbucks protein coffees. And I know I laugh because being an expat living overseas, we don't have that. Yeah. Like we're really you go to the grocery store and it's not apple season.

1:10:34You can't buy an apple. Right. It's very seasonal. Kind of how it usually is in the San Francisco Bay Area. But I come to the States. I go to Safeway. I'm like, what is this? This is a store full of stuff that isn't food. And you have protein pop tarts. You have protein popcorn. You have all these ultra processed things that have protein, protein, high fiber, and it's all additive. And I always remind people that we are not as smart as Mother Nature. So when you're engineering food, that's not the same as if you're eating the whole food.

1:11:06Dr. Mark Hyman:Right. Because there are cofactors in the whole food that actually work in your body to make it work. And this is a tactic of the food industry called nutritionism, which is a term coined by Michael Pollan about manipulating processed food to meet the latest food trend or fat. Right. Whether it's low fat, low carb, high fiber, high protein. So I kind of want to go to high protein Cheerios. I'm like, give me a break. I know. You're like, how much sugar's in there too? And they do it very fast. It's amazing how fast they reformulate. I know. And I'm like, wow. You know, and so I think people have to be really careful and stick to whole foods and not do all these weird protein kind of fad foods where they're out there.

1:11:49Dr. Mark Hyman:Some things are okay. There are some things out there, but just be very discerning and read the ingredient list to make sure they're not full of weird things you can't recognize or pronounce or don't have in your kitchen. Yeah. So in New Zealand, one protein bar is anywhere from five to$10. So it's not really that affordable. And people are like, well, what should I have instead? I was like, why don't you just look at a snicker bar? Because a snicker bar actually has more protein than these protein bars. And it's a dollar. So it's not like I'm promoting candy bars. But when the comparison, when you're looking, it's like, what are you actually getting when it says a protein or like protein bar on the label?

1:12:23Dr. Mark Hyman:Yeah. Like, you can't really identify everything in there. It doesn't taste that great. Whereas if you know that you're hungry, you get a payday or a snicker bar that has some fat and protein in it. That's a candy bar. You're not going to have it all the time. But it's going to probably fill you up better, and it gives you protein, and it's cheaper. A Snickers bar? I know. People have pushed back. I'm like, I know. Desperate times cause for desperate measures. I'd rather you have almonds and a cheese stick. But if you're really in a gas station and you have the option of a$10 Musashi bar or a$2 Snicker bar.

1:12:57Dr. Mark Hyman:If you were sort of advising women in the listing now, which they are, a lot of my list is women, and they just need to start one thing today, what would it be? I think the very first thing I tell every woman to do is to put some hard meetings in their calendar. That's a wellness meeting with themselves because we don't know where they are in their journey. But if we have 10 minutes three times a week dedicated to us, we start to find what we really need. So women who have never started a fitness journey, I tell them your 10 minutes on your first day is just to turn off, no noise, go outside, look at the light, have your coffee in front of the window, Just really try to like decompress and tune in.

1:13:36And then as you get used to those 10 minutes and you find out, yeah, I really like to stretch or I like to move or I want to be outside. Then we tap into that and say, you want to be outside? Okay, well, let's go outside for 10 minutes. Maybe you meet a friend and you do stairs for 10 minutes. Or maybe you're doing a bodyweight circuit. Is it cold and rainy and you don't want to go outside? You want to stay in front of the cozy fire? Great. Well, let's do a bodyweight circuit in front of that. because it's your time and it's for you. And what do we need to do for you to keep that wellness meeting and know that you can't break it because it's the start of these habits that are going to optimize.

1:14:13Dr. Mark Hyman:Wellness meetings. Wow, what a concept. Wellness meetings. I tell my team, like, if my schedule, I don't care if they're president of the United States calling me, you've got to make sure I have blocks of time where I can do my thing in the morning. Me too. Me too. All right. So let's do some quick-fire questions to wrap it up. What's the number one thing women should focus on for longevity? For longevity. So this is really interesting because it's a very big space and lots of information out there. For longevity, I tell them to look at what are your risk factors because there's so many different risks.

1:14:47You can look at family risk factors and know that you have your genetic code, but it doesn't have to dictate what's happening. So if you have a family history of dementia, then we want to focus on strength training. You want to do everything possible so that you don't turn those genes on. If you have a family history of osteoporosis, then we focus on that. So that's the first thing. How are we going to optimize? Look at family history.

1:15:08Dr. Mark Hyman:Let's work to optimize that. Your genes are predisposing you, but they're not predestined. Exactly. And that's the thing. Oh, my father died of a heart attack. So am I. No, no. You know that you're predisposed. So let's do all the things because we have all these tools. All right. And so that starts you on your longevity. Okay. So what's the biggest mistake women are making in the gym? They're following programs that aren't built for them. Or they're not. What size fits all. Yeah. Or they're not following programs. They're just going in and doing a class. What's more important, weight loss or muscle gain?

1:15:37I'm always about what are you gaining, not what you're losing.

1:15:40Dr. Mark Hyman:I'm with you, girl. I mean, I've been a doctor who's helped people lose hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions. I never tell people to lose weight. Yeah. I never focus on weight loss. I say, let's get healthy and here's how. And the weight loss is a side effect. How many days a week should women be training in the gym? We see to maintain it's one to two if you're strength training to kind of get gains and keep moving forward. It's three. Is it bad to do four or five or six? The worry is overtraining or under recovery if you are doing that. Because if we don't have a right plan, you can do four or five or six if it's planned out and you recover well.

1:16:18But basically.

1:16:18Dr. Mark Hyman:Different muscle groups so you're not doing the same thing every day. And eat. Please eat. You need abundance. Yeah. You need abundance to build muscle. It's counterintuitive. Like you need to eat a lot in order to lose weight. I know. But I love it because people are like, what? What about this calorie deficit and calories in, calories out? I'm like, no. That is an old idea. And still, everybody believes it. I know. It's like the earth is flat and it looks flat and it's going to be flat. What's the top tip to lose, sorry, to prevent muscle loss as you age? Protein, fiber at every meal and a focus on strength training.

1:16:53Dr. Mark Hyman:How about bone density? What's the most effective way to protect your bones? Jump training. Jump training, which is what? Jumping jacks, burpees? No, so there's been some really cool research studies that come out. One is the Lift More study out of Australia. The other is the osteogain stuff out of New Zealand. And it is looking at low landing, but landing hard. So it's not landing how we've all learned to absorb it in our joints. It's not plyometrics. I can't do that. I had back surgery. Yeah. Well, you could do a lift and slam your heels down. So it's not actually jumping. Yeah. Yeah. So there's ways of doing, or like you can look at med ball slams, right?

1:17:29Cause then you're absorbing it. You slam it or you slam it down. And so you're like. Interesting.

1:17:36Dr. Mark Hyman:Amazing. Okay. What about creatine for women? Yes. Absolutely. And how much? Oh, so I love this question because a systematic review came out three days ago and I was reading. I'm like, can't keep bubbling with you girl. Three days ago, a month ago. I'm like, all right. That's because I'm always reading. It went through all the creatine studies that were not like bodybuilding type. And it said the people that benefit the most from creatine supplementation are women aged 18 to 65. And the lowest dose of three to five grams is optimal. And then there are variations with that, of course. So if you're looking for cognitive benefits, it can go up a little bit higher.

1:18:11Yeah. And then if you're looking at like fatigue and shift work, it's that 0.38 grams per kilogram, which ends up about 20. So there's different variations within the dosage. depending on what you need. But the baseline is that three to five grams and takes about three weeks to fully saturate and then you start getting all the benefit.

1:18:28Dr. Mark Hyman:What's the biggest myth in women's health or fitness? That we age the same as men and that we should be doing the same. Yeah. And we unpacked that pretty well. Yeah. And what's one nutrition rule that most women get wrong? Oh, there are too many. Too many rules. Calories in, calories out. Let's go with that one. Yeah. Calories in, calories out. Yeah. Okay. What's your favorite pre-workout snack? Jack, your protein coffee. And how about post-workout meal? I always crave my bowl of Greek yogurt, nuts, protein powder, berries, chia seeds, and a double espresso. Damn. So you do the double espresso before and after?

1:19:09Oh, yeah. And then I stop.

1:19:11Dr. Mark Hyman:Okay. All right. And we didn't talk about this, but better work out in the morning or evening? For consistency's sake, we see that habits in the morning last longer. When you're looking at time press and you can do it at the end of the day, that's great because it's still getting it in. But we also then have to look at how close to bed it is. Because if you're driving your core temperature up, then that can lead to a couple of sleep issues unless you know how to drive it down. And knowing what you know now, what would you tell your 20-year-old self? Oh, my gosh. There's so many things. Because when I was 20, I was like fully endurance athlete, like a little bit of strength training, but just running and cycling and swimming and all of those things and not eating enough.

1:19:59Full low energy availability.

1:20:02Dr. Mark Hyman:Probably not having your period. Yeah, got it, lost it, got it, lost it. Stress fractures, all those things. So I would go back and say, look, you don't need to do all this. Let's look at how you're going to train for Ironman and Xterra doing it properly. Amazing. Okay. And your website is drstacysims.com? Yes. With a Y, Stacey with a Y? Yeah, no E. No E. And where else can people learn about you and your work? So socials, of course, the same, drstacysems.com. And then our new company is Collective X, Collective X Health. Okay. Give us a one, two cents on that. Yeah. So we are going, it's a women's intelligence platform.

1:20:41So we're going after the problem with AI and the rhetoric of regurgitating poor information that's been based on male data. So we have a research arm.

1:20:51Dr. Mark Hyman:So we have a patriarchal AI system and you're trying to fix that. Exactly. We're going after the sports to correct the sports outcome. We're looking at the wearables. We're looking at the medical. So we're really going after it. And it's a collective because we're partnering with all the other people who want to do the same thing. Amazing. Well, Stacey, you're just a wealth of information. I learned so much. And I'm in this field. So I'm just kind of leaving with all kinds of news to use and nuggets and wisdom. So thank you so much. Yeah. I'm going to try your protein coffee. Awesome. I love it.

1:21:25Thanks.

1:21:26Dr. Mark Hyman:And good luck with everything you're doing. Thank you so much. It's been great. If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to The Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer.

1:22:01Dr. Mark Hyman:This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com and request to become a patient.

1:22:33Dr. Mark Hyman:It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.