Optimizing Women's Health and Performance Through Physiological Understanding

Hormone balance 0:00 0
“we have puberty we have our reproductive years we have pregnancy in there we have per menopause we have post-menopause we have menstrual cycle each one of those is a different hormone profile that can affect the way we eat and the way we train but no one told us this or what we can do until right now”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 0:43 0
“we see men do really well on calorie restriction and fasting but for women doesn't happen that way”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 0:50 0
“during puberty girls hips widen shoulders widen which changes our angle of need to hit what we call the que angle so they don't feel comfortable running or swimming or jumping”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 3:14 0
“caffeine clears blood sugar so a woman is going to have to eat when she uses caffeine whereas a man doesn't have to”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 5:59 0
“menstrual cycle came down to understanding that one week I was in a low hormone State and then the next week I wasn't”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 8:18 0
“we see when progesterone comes up after ovulation our core temperature comes up we don't have as much heat tolerance”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 9:07 0
“if you are going in the high hormone phase then we say okay well you don't need a primer you can just go in and do nine days in a row but if you start in the low hormone phase you actually have to go into the sauna for five minutes come back out and then go back in and do that during the low hormone phase for nine days in a row”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 11:05 0
“looking at hormone replacement therapy in menopausal women”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 11:08 0
“but also looking at exercise as a cohort to that”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Sleep 11:47 0
“how can we maximize some of the things we know from high performance with regards to sleep”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Stress 12:54 0
“we look at stress and the mom under stress we see that there's a higher incidence of a miscarriage if it's a developing boy fetus than a girl fetus”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Genetics 13:03 0
“it has to do with XX versus XY”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 16:54 0
“exercise and as it relates to we'll talk about the Q angle a little bit more in a second when we talk about exercise but the as it relates to the other changes”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Body weight 17:05 0
“so if we see essential fat for men is around 4 to 8% so that means what we need for our nerves and just survival yeah for women essential fat is around 12% okay so this is for nerves and and looking around our essential organs to survive”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 17:39 0
“women have smaller heart and lungs yeah relative to relative body size to men we also have less hemoglobin so that means our oxygen carrying capacity is lower”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 19:28 0
“so when we're looking at um I guess world World Records right that have been kept and we see there's a gender gap there MH and this is slowly closing in the endurance world but that has to do with muscle morphology with regards to being able to go long and slow we're looking at the Sprint capacity where we have to have a quick transference of oxygen and quick muscle contraction that Gap isn't closing and that is because we have smaller lungs smaller heart we have less blood volume we have less red cells so the overall capacity for quickly developing power and speed is at a smaller um I guess it's a limited capacity in women versus men”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 22:41 0
“it comes down to one 22:41 training stress two mechanics and if 22:44 we're not taught again how to land how 22:47 to run how to jump with the new angles 22:50 it predisposes people to severe ACL 22:53 injury”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 25:30 0
“it's all about being strong so if we're looking at how what is the biggest thing for ACL prevention and I'll bring in one of my PhD students that's graduated looked at um ACL rehab after surgery and it comes down to the definitive difference between quad and hamstring strength”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 32:01 0
“if we're looking at injury and the way that estrogen makes more um laxative ligaments so that means that our ligaments become more relaxed when estrogen comes up which is why people assume that around ovulation is when people will have more ACL tears it's not because we also see that progesterone comes in and can have a different effect on the tendons but that isn't accounted for in a lot of of the protocols that are out there for training and prevention of overtraining”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 33:21 0
“when we're looking at calories in calories out that idea of that algorithm can work well in men and the reason for that is the hypothalamus so if we're looking at the hypothalamus which is an area in the brain that controls appetite it also controls our endocrine system so for men they don't have as many of what we call our kisspeptin neurons activated so this is uh neurons that are responsible for when we have nutrients coming in they fire they're like yeah okay we got enough nutrition coming in that we can now accommodate for developing muscle and losing body fat”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Metabolic health 34:54 0
“for women it sits there the blood glucose sits there and when it starts being used use the hypothalamus is like okay where's the extra food that's coming in so we can keep going and countering the stress that's coming in”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Metabolic health 35:21 0
“for men it's 15 calories per kilogram of fat-free mass for women it's 30”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 37:34 0
“it would be better for you as a woman to have maybe 15 gram of protein if you're going to do strength or 15 grams of protein with 30 grams of carb which isn't a lot before you go do cardio and strength”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 42:08 0
“carbohydrates are really important so we see that there is a development of egg maturation we have better endocrine pulse so that means that our hormones that pulse on a daily basis they actually have the full pulse um and return to Baseline to encourage the body a really robust endocrine system so that's thyroid that's our menstrual cycle it's all of the things”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 41:31 0
“in times of low calorie intake or low food intake a woman's body will start to conserve and wind down because it thinks that there's a famine coming but for men they're not as sensitive and the body's like oh not a lot of calories coming in that must mean there's a fight that I have to prepare for so I'm going to lean up I'm going to address all of my fuel systems so that I can tap into all these alternative fuel systems so that I will have the energy to be able to go and fight the Beast to bring the calories back”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Fasting 42:00 0
“so when there's adequate calories available we see that women will lean up they'll become uh more acutely aware cognitive function comes up carbohydrates are really important so we see that there is a development of egg maturation we have better endocrine pulse so that means that our hormones that pulse on a daily basis they actually have the full pulse um and return to Baseline to encourage the body a really robust endocrine system so that's thyroid that's our menstrual cycle it's all of the things but when we start pulling the calories back all that stuff winds down”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 46:02 0
“exercise you start exercising your body is trying to provide fuel so it's breaking down fat, it's breaking down glucose, it's breaking down amino acids. It's also creating in a recovery standpoint a boost of growth hormone, a boost of testosterone in both men and women that creates the cell cleanup which is autophagy.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 46:26 0
“exercise is a stronger stimulus for it but the problem is we've become a lazy society and people think exercise is too hard.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 48:54 0
“resistance training is key for mobilizing abdominal fat and for creating more lean mass and also increasing the amount of crosstalk between their skeletal muscle and stored fat through little things called myokines which are hormone signals that are released during exercise and released from the skeletal muscle.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Body weight 51:55 0
“we need to lose some weight first so that we can then implement some of the adaptive changes of exercise”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Metabolic health 52:18 0
“for women it happens within 30 to 40 minutes after exercise for men it's 2 to 18 hours depending on the intensity”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 52:43 0
“35 grams of protein post exercise within 45 minutes will tip the muscle into muscle protein synthesis for men it's 20 grams and it can be two four whatever hours later”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Gut health 53:22 0
“when we look at the gut microbiome that is so important we see a decrease in diversity as we become more and more I guess City dwelling and we are having less and less of uh Variety in our food chain”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 53:41 0
“the ketogenic diet and the high fat intake that comes with it significantly decreases that gut microbiome diversity which reduces the body's ability to synthesize vitamins to produce serotonin to have this conversation between the gut and the Brain”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 58:28 0
“it takes a longer time for core temperature to come up so women can spend more time in the heat before they start to get changes in their hormone responses and blood volume adaptations”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 58:41 0
“for men they can go in and I kind of laugh my husband will come in with me in the sauna and I'll sit there for like 10 minutes I'm not sweating yet and he's like pouring he's like I got to get out”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Substances 1:02:09 0
“if we're looking at creatine for health and for women the dose is 3 to five grams only once a day without carbohydrate”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Gut health 1:03:36 0
“Integrity of the mucosal lining and creatine is really important for that so if we're looking at saturating the body over three weeks with 3 to five grams we improve that Integrity so we have less GI distress.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Mental health 1:03:49 0
“There have been randomized control trials looking at mood and with specifically with regards to depression and anxiety and women who are taking 3 to five grams of creatine will come out of a depressive episode more so than women who are just using an SSRI.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 1:04:23 0
“Creatine supplementation for both men and women enhances muscle strength, increases lean muscle mass, improves high intensity exercise performance, improves recovery, has potential cognitive benefits and supports in neurodegenerative diseases.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 1:05:51 0
“If we're looking at Vitamin D especially vitamin D3, the difference so you have vitamin D2 and vitamin D3, vitamin D2 is more of a storage form it's not converted to being a functional form so if you take D3 it's already a functional form so it means your body is going to take it in and use it as it should be.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 1:09:39 0
“so iron is responsible for allowing those heem groups to carry oxygen if we have low iron then we don't have enough oxygen circulating throughout the body or being used by the body so you feel very flat very tired you start to get really dark circles under your eyes um it's a mission to do anything so it's like a deadend fatigue”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 1:10:20 0
“what foods have iron in them or iron rich so primarily red meat is where a lot of people turn to but if you are more plant-based then we look at leafy greens we look at nuts and seeds but using a lot of vitamin C with that prly adding um a little bit of olive oil on our salads uh maybe cooking in an iron skillet to improve the amount of iron that comes into the food”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Metabolic health 1:12:26 0
“insulin is the hormone that that is a signal for your muscles to uptake glucose to store it okay so it sends a signal to grab the glucose out my blood store it which brings my glucose levels down”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 1:12:15 0
“when progesterone comes up it's trying to take in everything as a building block for the uterine lining insulin resistance what does that mean so insulin is the hormone that that is a signal for your muscles to uptake glucose to store it okay so it sends a signal to grab the glucose out my blood store it which brings my glucose levels down”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 1:16:23 0
“after ovulation like I said progesterone comes up it's only produced if we ovulate because progesterone is produced from the breakdown of the housing of the egg progesterone like I said earlier will hold everything in the blood it will tell the body we need more blood glucose and we need that glucose to come to the endometrial lining we also need more amino acids so we're going to break down lean mass or I'm going to make this person crave more protein oriented Foods so that I can have amino acids to come in”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 1:17:11 0
“from day 14 onwards if we are going to do a lot of high intensity workout or High um a big workout yeah then we need to just make sure we're having more cobs yeah and then we have around a 12% increase in our protein needs because we have a higher amount of amino acids that are needed one because we're developing tissue but two we also have skeletal muscle turn over that we need to keep up with”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Mental health 1:18:49 0
“so I tell women instead of really dialing it in and saying oh well I think I ovulated today so that means I should back it down when you go to the gym use what we call sessional rating of perceived exertion so I tell people most of the time you're going to go in you're going to have a physical and a mental right physical how are you on a 1 to 10 mental how are you on a 1 to 10 if physically you're an eight and mentally you're a two warm up really well and see if that mental capacity comes back up if not then we're not going to push too hard”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 1:21:23 0
“which drives the menstrual cycle to start the bleeding phase we have a change in our immune system”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 1:22:13 0
“when you start having changes in the norm that's when you want to look and say am I getting into low energy availability am I not recovering well enough or am I my late 30s early 40s and I started getting into per menopause”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Stress management 1:22:34 0
“we see changes in the bleed pattern as well as the length of the menstrual cycle itself when the body is not adapting to stress and stress isn't just our daily life stress it's exercise stress”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 1:23:07 0
“working out too much not eating enough is the big one”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Sleep 1:26:09 0
“sleep's really important because that's where we have our parasympathetic drive and our ability to recover”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Sleep 1:27:18 0
“so when women are talking about having really poor sleep right before their menstrual cycle it is because we have these sex hormones that are interfering with our sleep phases”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Circadian rhythm 1:27:25 0
“for men they don't have that perturbation for men we see that um chronologically they tend to have a melatonin Peak that's later than women so they tend to want to stay up later and they can sleep in but they can also have shorter sleeps”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Circadian rhythm 1:27:53 0
“women suffer more with jet lag and if so why why is that because if we're looking at our circadian rhythms and how long they are like I said melatonin Peaks earlier for women than men and we have a slightly different”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Circadian rhythm 1:33:16 0
“we see a lot of this circadian misalignment that's occurring we see it a lot in shift workers we see it a lot in our Global Society of staying up late and working and having screens”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Circadian rhythm 1:33:27 0
“the impact on metabolism is that it changes appetite hormones for women where it will increase the craving for carbohydrates and the desire to eat more and they don't ever feel full”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Circadian rhythm 1:33:55 0
“we want to shift to be able to eat during the day and to have regular food at regular intervals so that our body has fuel to do what it needs during the day”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Circadian rhythm 1:34:07 0
“have a good two to three hours before we go to bed so that when we do go to bed all our parasympathetic responses can go into getting really good sleep architecture”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 1:39 0
“every system in your body is being affected because your sex hormones are changing”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 16:59 0
“we know that there's irregularity in a menstrual cycle until people are around 3 years post the onset of their first menstrual cycle”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 1:42:11 0
“how do I need to be thinking about my nutrition and exercise in that phase”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Body weight 1:44:18 0
“we're going to change that free fatty acid into what we call esterified fatty acid which then gets stored as visceral fat and visceral fat is that dangerous fat that gets stored around the organs”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 1:44:50 0
“if they don't know they're in par menopause then they don't know that that's what's happening”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 1:45:27 0
“there's exercise there's lifestyle and then if all else is really going to [__] then we can look at using some menopause hormone therapy”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Body weight 1:45:56 0
“we see that there is a greater incidence of vasomotor symptoms or hot flashes for women who have a greater amount of body fat”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Genetics 1:46:17 0
“you also have to look at what your mom went through because if your mom had a really really horrible time with lots of so vasomotor symptoms and body composition change there's a genetic link”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 1:49:19 0
“for menopause we want a higher protein intake of course because as we get older we become more anabolically resistant to protein so that means our body isn't responding as much to the amino acids so we need a higher dose to invoke muscle protein synthesis and Bone regeneration”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Gut health 1:50:25 0
“microbiome to have more of the bacteria that says hey you know what we want more lean mass we want to have less body fat”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Hormone balance 1:51:17 0
“we're not looking to replace hormones we're looking at a therapy to attenuate change”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Stress management 1:56:44 0
“we have to look at things like heart rate variability we have to look at properly putting in intensity and resistance training to work with blood glucose levels to again attenuate some of the symptomology that comes with PCOS”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Nutrition 2:02:22 0
“we get up we have the coffee then we go to the gym.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)
Exercise 2:02:22 0
“we get up we have the coffee then we go to the gym.”

No comments yet.

View all comments (0)

Understanding Gender-Specific Physiological Differences and Their Impact on Nutrition, Exercise, and Health

Hormonal Influences Across Life Stages

Dr. Stacy Sims highlighted the profound influence of hormonal profiles across different life stages of women, including puberty, pregnancy, menopause, and menstrual cycles, on their nutritional needs and exercise responses. These stages significantly affect how women should approach their diet and fitness, although there is a lack of guidance on adapting to these changes.

Puberty and Biomechanics

During puberty, physical changes like the widening of hips affect the biomechanics of young women, influencing their comfort and efficiency in physical activities such as running and jumping.

Fasting and Calorie Restriction

Fasting and calorie restriction, often effective for men, do not yield similar benefits for women. This discrepancy is largely due to different hormonal responses and metabolic processes between genders.

Caffeine and Blood Sugar Management

Caffeine metabolization differs between genders, affecting blood sugar levels. Dr. Sims advises that women need to accompany caffeine intake with food to stabilize blood sugar, a requirement less critical for men.

Exercise Adaptations and Risks

Understanding and adjusting to physical changes during puberty is crucial to prevent injuries like ACL tears, often prevalent due to improper training in young women. Moreover, strength training is emphasized as essential for ACL injury prevention by balancing muscle strength between quadriceps and hamstrings.

Nutritional Needs and Hormonal Cycles

Women’s nutritional strategies must adapt to their menstrual cycles, requiring increased intake of carbohydrates and proteins post-ovulation to support higher metabolic demands. This adaptation helps support hormonal balance and overall physical performance.

Mental and Metabolic Health

Creatine supplementation was pointed out as beneficial not just for physical health but also for mental well-being, aiding women in recovering from depressive episodes more effectively than some medications. Metabolically, women’s bodies respond more rapidly post-exercise, demanding quicker nutritional replenishment to optimize recovery and maintain muscle function.

Role of Gut Health

Dietary choices impact gut microbiome diversity, which plays a significant role in overall health. High-fat diets like ketogenic diets can reduce this diversity, impairing functions from vitamin synthesis to serotonin production, essential for mental health.

Impact of Circadian Rhythms on Health

Gender differences in circadian rhythms influence sleep patterns, with women experiencing earlier melatonin peaks. These biological clocks significantly affect metabolic functions and stress levels, thereby requiring tailored eating schedules and stress management strategies to align with natural rhythms.

Challenges of Perimenopause and Menopause

Perimenopause and menopause bring about significant hormonal changes that influence every bodily system. Strategies during these stages include higher protein intake and potential hormone therapy to manage symptoms and maintain metabolic health.

By understanding these gender-specific physiological differences, women can optimize their health and performance throughout various life stages, though increased awareness and research are needed to provide more nuanced guidance.