Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / The Big Myth About Women's Bodies, Trans Athletes in Sports, and The 'Pink It + Shrink It' Trick to Avoid: with Dr. Stacy Sims

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The Big Myth About Women's Bodies, Trans Athletes in Sports, and The 'Pink It + Shrink It' Trick to Avoid: with Dr. Stacy Sims · QUESTION EVERYTHING

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Speaker 1: The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
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Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Kara Natterson and I'm Vanessa Crol Bennett. We're
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Speaker 2: the co hosts of the Puberty Podcast.
0:11
Speaker 1: Each week, we dive into the what and how of
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Speaker 1: raising kids through puberty, that roller coaster of physical and
0:19
Speaker 1: emotional shifts for kids and parents alike.
0:22
Speaker 2: Combining reliable science and relatable parenting strategies, we will all
0:27
Speaker 2: learn about, laugh about, and yes maybe even cry about adolescents,
0:32
Speaker 2: ours and theirs.
0:47
Speaker 3: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
0:52
Speaker 3: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe and each week my guests
0:56
Speaker 3: and I have conversations that put a.
0:57
Speaker 4: New spin on pretty. This is pretty smart.
1:05
Speaker 3: From research funding to clinical trials, the gender data gap
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Speaker 3: has an effect on women's health globally. Here are a
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Speaker 3: few pretty jarring statistics. Did you know that girls in
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Speaker 3: sports are nearly two times more likely to drop out
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Speaker 3: by the age of fourteen, Or that heart disease kills
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Speaker 3: more women than all cancers put together, and still about
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Speaker 3: seventy five percent of research for the disease is performed
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Speaker 3: on men. This one really shocked me. Women's hormonal states
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Speaker 3: and period cycles are usually ignored entirely in medical trials.
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Speaker 4: Or how about this?
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Speaker 3: The federal government only uses crash test dummies modeled on
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Speaker 3: male bodies, and car companies are not required to use
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Speaker 3: dummies modeled on female bodies either.
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Speaker 4: So what does this all mean?
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Speaker 3: Well, there's a real lack of data about women's health.
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Speaker 4: It's under researched and underfunded.
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Speaker 3: How can we really even understand how our bodies work
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Speaker 3: if we aren't studying them properly. Doctor Stacy Simms is
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Speaker 3: an environmental exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist specializing in sex differences.
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Speaker 3: She's also the author of Roar. Her work has changed
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Speaker 3: the way women train, eat, and compete, and she's trying
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Speaker 3: to change the way the medical, nutritional, and athletic communities
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Speaker 3: study women's bodies. Her approach went viral in her ted talk.
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Speaker 3: It's simple, women are not small men. It seems obvious, right,
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Speaker 3: But when it comes to nutrition and health and medicine,
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Speaker 3: society tends to favor a one size fits all approach. Today,
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Speaker 3: doctor Stacy dispels myths about women's bodies and what we've
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Speaker 3: been taught. We talk about the best workouts and foods
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Speaker 3: to eat for recovery, for each phase of your cycle,
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Speaker 3: how covid completely shifted women's health, how to spot marketing
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Speaker 3: tricks for women's products known as shrink it and pink It,
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Speaker 3: and her opinion on trans men and women competing in
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Speaker 3: sport against the other biological sex. I know you're supposed
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Speaker 3: to undersell and not overseell things, but this is one
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Speaker 3: of my favorite and I think one of the most impactful.
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Speaker 4: Episodes to date.
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Speaker 3: Stacy, you were a cross country runner for most of
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Speaker 3: your life, and then you got to Purdue University and
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Speaker 3: you started crewing, and you tell this story about crewing
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Speaker 3: with eight women training exactly the way the men's crew
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Speaker 3: team was training, same race schedule, same practices, same food,
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Speaker 3: and despite all of this sameness, you said, the women's
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Speaker 3: team felt flat and you started to ask questions.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, and it was interesting because we didn't really
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Speaker 5: understand what was going on, right, because you expect to
3:58
Speaker 5: be able to peak for the major race is just
4:00
Speaker 5: like the guys did. But it was at the same
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Speaker 5: time where I was in the exercise Fizz program there
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Speaker 5: Purdue and started asking, really, well, why is this happening.
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Speaker 5: I don't get it, and no one could give me
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Speaker 5: an answer. And it was like the light bulb moment
4:17
Speaker 5: when I was in a metabolism lab and being one
4:20
Speaker 5: of the only fit women, relatively fit for endurance, I
4:24
Speaker 5: was the one that would always volunteer to do all
4:27
Speaker 5: the running tests and stuff, and remembering that this one
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Speaker 5: lab they wanted to look at carbohydrate and no carbohydrate
4:36
Speaker 5: on running, just as a learning lab said to run
4:40
Speaker 5: on a treadmill for two hours with just water one week,
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Speaker 5: and then run on a treadmill for two hours the
4:46
Speaker 5: next week with carbohydrate to see what the differences in
4:49
Speaker 5: like fuel utilization and all that kind of.
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Speaker 6: Stuff that you learn next fizz.
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Speaker 5: And they looked at my data and decided that it
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Speaker 5: was wrong. Part I was like, how can it be wrong.
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Speaker 5: I've done everything the same same now. Remember I already
5:05
Speaker 5: have it in my head going, well, what's going on
5:07
Speaker 5: with our team and our boat. And so when the
5:11
Speaker 5: instructor was like, well, you must have done something wrong
5:15
Speaker 5: because this is what's supposed to happen when we're using carbohydrate,
5:18
Speaker 5: and I was like, what do you mean, Well, you're
5:20
Speaker 5: using too much fat for fuel, you're not using the carbohydrate.
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Speaker 5: And then compared mine versus the two guys that did
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Speaker 5: the lab as well, and it was different, but instead
5:31
Speaker 5: of trying to like dig in and ask did I standardized?
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Speaker 5: Did I do everything the same which I had, they
5:37
Speaker 5: just threw it out and I was like, oh, that's weird.
5:40
Speaker 5: And then I started reading a bit more and going, hey, wait,
5:43
Speaker 5: minstrel cycle, minstrel cycle, Okay, what's going on here? And
5:47
Speaker 5: then I started asking, well, maybe it's because I was
5:49
Speaker 5: in two different phases of my minstrual cycle.
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Speaker 6: And they're like nah, Now, I was like, well, how
5:55
Speaker 6: do you know that?
5:56
Speaker 5: And it just came like that was the deciding moment
5:59
Speaker 5: there where realizing that everything we were learning.
6:03
Speaker 6: Wasn't really applicable for women.
6:05
Speaker 5: But it didn't really really start to sink in until
6:08
Speaker 5: I started getting through the undergraduate program and looking all
6:11
Speaker 5: these other lab stuff, and then got into my master's
6:13
Speaker 5: grade and was doing stuff on women and overtraining because
6:18
Speaker 5: you just see all the research on men, and it
6:20
Speaker 5: just started digging at me. And it stems from almost
6:23
Speaker 5: all scientific research comes from that male lens, where they're
6:26
Speaker 5: looking specifically from that patriarchal idea of this is how
6:30
Speaker 5: we design a study, and everything's the same same, but
6:33
Speaker 5: they don't take into account hormone proturbations because it never
6:36
Speaker 5: really entered anybody's mind.
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Speaker 3: There is such a lack of data in women's health.
6:44
Speaker 3: It's under researched and underfunded at this point. Why is
6:50
Speaker 3: it still under researched and underfunded.
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Speaker 5: It still stems from more of the marginalization and the
6:58
Speaker 5: sociocultural aspects that we have in our society. So if
7:03
Speaker 5: we think about, like even the history of sport and women,
7:06
Speaker 5: it was only in sixties, I guess when we're looking
7:10
Speaker 5: at running the Boston Marathon and we have the images
7:13
Speaker 5: of Catherine Switzer being pulled off the running course because
7:17
Speaker 5: she's a woman and she's not a man, And it
7:19
Speaker 5: really wasn't that long ago, right, And so it still
7:22
Speaker 5: this prevailing idea that women are delicate flowers and we
7:26
Speaker 5: shouldn't really make them participate in research studies.
7:29
Speaker 6: And it's that myth.
7:30
Speaker 5: And so that myth also gets perpetuated in the fact
7:32
Speaker 5: that women aren't really volunteering for these studies either because
7:36
Speaker 5: they feel like they're not adequate enough to contribute to
7:39
Speaker 5: the science. So it's kind of a catch twenty two
7:43
Speaker 5: and a self fulfilling prophecy where people will say well,
7:47
Speaker 5: not enough women are interested, so we'll just do cell studies,
7:50
Speaker 5: or we'll do stuff on men in generalize, and then
7:52
Speaker 5: women are like, no, I want researched on a me,
7:54
Speaker 5: and theyn like, well, it's too difficult.
7:55
Speaker 6: There's not enough funding. So it's back forth, back forth,
7:58
Speaker 6: back forth.
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Speaker 5: Even though we have mandates now like the NIH is
8:00
Speaker 5: saying you can't have just generalized research. You have to
8:04
Speaker 5: be sex specific, even right down to cellular and rat
8:08
Speaker 5: studies and stuff like that. But people find loopholes to
8:11
Speaker 5: get around it because there's very limited funding across the
8:15
Speaker 5: board for all research, and then when you get into
8:17
Speaker 5: sport and exercise science research, the funding is like tumbleweeds.
8:21
Speaker 6: It's really hard to come by.
8:24
Speaker 3: So you mentioned that the hormonal fluctuations. Women's hormonal fluctuations
8:28
Speaker 3: change the way we should train for somebody who has
8:31
Speaker 3: very limited knowledge of carbohydrates and fats and sort of
8:35
Speaker 3: how that works.
8:37
Speaker 4: In the most digestible way you can.
8:39
Speaker 3: Can you try and explain to me how we can
8:43
Speaker 3: train in the most impactful way with our homonal cycle.
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Speaker 5: Sure, so I'll just do the little biology dive so
8:51
Speaker 5: people can can understand, and I'll set the stage perfect.
8:54
Speaker 5: So if we're looking at a typical minstrual cycle, so
8:57
Speaker 5: we say day one is the first day of bleeding
9:00
Speaker 5: and day twenty eight is the day before you start
9:04
Speaker 5: bleeding again. And that's textbooks, so they say, you know,
9:08
Speaker 5: round twenty eight day cycle. So day one too, around
9:11
Speaker 5: day fourteen is what we call the follicular or low
9:14
Speaker 5: hormone phase, and this is when progesterone is really low.
9:18
Speaker 5: Estrogen's low, and then it starts to come up around
9:21
Speaker 5: day ten eleven twelve, right before ovulation. So what happens
9:25
Speaker 5: in that low hormone phase is our body is more
9:29
Speaker 5: quote like men, where we can access carbohydrate from our
9:32
Speaker 5: liver and our muscle really well, so we can hit
9:34
Speaker 5: intensities and we feel really good, and we can push
9:38
Speaker 5: the pace so we can push the power. Our body
9:40
Speaker 5: recovers really well is because it gets a signaling oh yeah,
9:44
Speaker 5: I have the ability to be resilient to stress. Our
9:47
Speaker 5: immune system is also very responsive and we can handle stress.
9:52
Speaker 5: So this is a point where we can really go
9:53
Speaker 5: hard around ovulation when estrogen comes up. Estrogen in itself
9:59
Speaker 5: is antibolic, so we go okay around ovulation.
10:02
Speaker 6: We can use more.
10:03
Speaker 5: Carbohydrate our temperature drops a little bit, so we have
10:06
Speaker 5: a greater time to fatigue and we have a better
10:09
Speaker 5: ability to recover from high stress muscle activity then after ovulation,
10:15
Speaker 5: so that's around day fourteen to day twenty eight, so
10:18
Speaker 5: that is after ovulation.
10:19
Speaker 6: In the high hormone phase, estrogen.
10:22
Speaker 5: Progesterone start to come up because after ovulation, progesterone gets
10:26
Speaker 5: produced and it comes up.
10:28
Speaker 6: Now progesterone counters estrogen. So in this high hormone.
10:31
Speaker 5: Phase leading up to your period, so the last two
10:34
Speaker 5: weeks of the cycle, we have a fuel shift because
10:37
Speaker 5: progesterone's job is to make building blocks available to create
10:43
Speaker 5: the endometrial lining, the uterine lining. So what it does
10:47
Speaker 5: is it breaks down muscle tissue. It shuttles carbohydrate away
10:52
Speaker 5: from the liver and the muscle to put into the
10:55
Speaker 5: building endometriol lining. It increases your metabolic activity. You're needing
11:01
Speaker 5: more calories.
11:03
Speaker 6: Just to exist.
11:04
Speaker 5: And we also have estrogen that comes into play that
11:07
Speaker 5: crosses a blood brain barrier and reduces our motivation. So
11:11
Speaker 5: when we look at fuel shifts, what we do in
11:13
Speaker 5: that high hormone phase, we need more protein because our
11:16
Speaker 5: body is being pushed to break down more things because
11:20
Speaker 5: of progesterone. And if we're going to exercise and do
11:23
Speaker 5: any kind of intensity, then we need to bring in
11:25
Speaker 5: some more carbohydrate. So we need eat a little bit
11:27
Speaker 5: of carbohydrate before we exercise. If we're going for a
11:30
Speaker 5: longer or a really high intensity session, we need to
11:33
Speaker 5: look at using some carbohydrates. So it could be a
11:37
Speaker 5: fig or could be a sport drink or something to
11:39
Speaker 5: bring some carbohydrate in so that we can hit those
11:42
Speaker 5: intensities and overcome those metabolic shifts. So if we're looking
11:46
Speaker 5: across the board, in that high hormone phase, we become
11:49
Speaker 5: less resilient to stress, so we want to look at
11:52
Speaker 5: doing more steady state work. And then the few days
11:55
Speaker 5: before our period starts, we want to look at more technique,
11:58
Speaker 5: looking at running drills, mobility, functional movement, because again our
12:03
Speaker 5: bodies under a lot of stress and inflammation because of
12:06
Speaker 5: the way these hormones respond.
12:08
Speaker 3: Then our period comes in, boom, we can hit it
12:10
Speaker 3: hard again. So once your period comes, when you're on
12:13
Speaker 3: your period, you can do hit training for instance. Yeah.
12:17
Speaker 5: Yeah, And there are caveats, right, because we know that
12:21
Speaker 5: over one third of women who are active recreational active
12:27
Speaker 5: suffer from heavy minstrual bleeding. So that's the really bad cramping,
12:31
Speaker 5: heavy heavy minstrel flow, and for the first two to
12:33
Speaker 5: three days of the period, they're like, I can't get
12:35
Speaker 5: out of bed, it's too painful. Don't even ask me
12:39
Speaker 5: to do any kind of heavy activity. But that's not normal.
12:43
Speaker 5: And as much as we want to talk about the
12:45
Speaker 5: menstrual cycle and say this is textbook and this is
12:48
Speaker 5: how it's supposed to go, no one actually talks about
12:50
Speaker 5: the mechanics of what is normal for bleeding. So a
12:53
Speaker 5: lot of women are in this heavy mintual bleeding state
12:57
Speaker 5: and they think that that's normal because no one's going
12:59
Speaker 5: to compare what their cycle is or what their menstrual
13:02
Speaker 5: bleed is to their friends, because no one's going to
13:05
Speaker 5: be like, hey, I am bleeding so much. I have
13:08
Speaker 5: all these plots coming out and I can't do anything right.
13:11
Speaker 6: People are just like, oh, it's that time of the month.
13:13
Speaker 5: I have really bad bloating and cramps I need to
13:15
Speaker 5: take But women need to know that that's not normal
13:18
Speaker 5: and there are things that you can do to get
13:21
Speaker 5: those few days back, and one of the easiest but
13:26
Speaker 5: from a physiological point of view, but not necessarily easiest
13:30
Speaker 5: from a psychological point of view is to get progestin
13:34
Speaker 5: only IUD because that reduces bleeding, reduces the thickness of
13:39
Speaker 5: the endomutual lining, And over the course of two months,
13:43
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, you're like, oh, my gosh, this
13:45
Speaker 5: is what quote normal is because from a normal bleed pattern,
13:49
Speaker 5: you shouldn't be in bed from cramps. So after I
13:54
Speaker 5: move that caveat out of the way, and we look
13:56
Speaker 5: from a physiological perspective, you can go really super hard
14:01
Speaker 5: on your period, and this is a really good time
14:03
Speaker 5: to do it because your body's like, yeah, okay, hormones
14:07
Speaker 5: have dropped, inflammation has dropped, body's ready to like hit
14:11
Speaker 5: it hard, and we have all the stimulus for recovery.
14:15
Speaker 5: And that's the big prevailing myth that women should be
14:18
Speaker 5: hidden away and take it easy during their period, and
14:22
Speaker 5: it's not true.
14:24
Speaker 3: I am so blown away by this because I feel
14:27
Speaker 3: like there are things that I've said in my life
14:29
Speaker 3: where my friends have said where it's like I just
14:32
Speaker 3: get really tired sometimes, or like women will be like,
14:36
Speaker 3: we're just like more tired than men, and we say
14:38
Speaker 3: it sort of jokingly, but there's actually a physiological reason
14:42
Speaker 3: for it, and nobody ever talks to us about.
14:44
Speaker 4: It, right exactly, do you feel kind of cuckoo?
14:48
Speaker 5: There's also a double layer in that too, so we
14:52
Speaker 5: know that the psychological supersedes the physiological. So if we
14:56
Speaker 5: all go around talking about how awful it is to
14:59
Speaker 5: be on your p period and how tired and crampy
15:02
Speaker 5: you get the few days before your period, you start
15:05
Speaker 5: to believe it. And that's how these myths get for
15:07
Speaker 5: you know, pervasively ingrained in our thought process. But if
15:12
Speaker 5: we go around talking about the empowerment of the period
15:15
Speaker 5: and having a period is an ergogenic aid, and knowing
15:19
Speaker 5: that you're healthy because you have a regular cycle, it
15:22
Speaker 5: changes the mind and we start to see, yeah, okay,
15:26
Speaker 5: I got my period today and it's like five K
15:28
Speaker 5: race day fantastic, I'm going to hit a pr And
15:31
Speaker 5: if we track our cycle, we can see our own
15:34
Speaker 5: individual variations, right, so we know, like we're tracking minstrel
15:38
Speaker 5: cycle and we see in our own patterning patterning that
15:41
Speaker 5: like day eighteen we're super duper flat. For every time
15:45
Speaker 5: we track in the cycle three four months, every day
15:48
Speaker 5: eighteen we're super flat. So you're not going to schedule
15:51
Speaker 5: or go to a high intensity class the day because
15:54
Speaker 5: you're flat and you're tired, and you know that. So
15:57
Speaker 5: it takes away that second guessing that so many women have.
16:00
Speaker 5: What did I do yesterday? Why am I so tired?
16:02
Speaker 5: Did I not eat well? Did I not sleep well?
16:05
Speaker 5: I shouldn't have had that glass of wine. But if
16:07
Speaker 5: we see this patterning and we know on the days
16:09
Speaker 5: that we're flat, then we can account for it. And
16:12
Speaker 5: again it's another empowerment aspect that I want women to
16:15
Speaker 5: understand that every woman's individual cycle is their own lived experience.
16:20
Speaker 5: So if we understand the days where we feel fantastic,
16:24
Speaker 5: then that's the day we can push and push and
16:26
Speaker 5: push not only in exercise, but like in the boardroom
16:29
Speaker 5: other decisions like be empowered about it. And then the
16:32
Speaker 5: days we know that we feel a bit flat, then
16:35
Speaker 5: we back it down a bit and we can take
16:37
Speaker 5: account for that flatness. So tracking the mistral cycle goes
16:41
Speaker 5: way beyond just exercise and training, but it also goes
16:45
Speaker 5: into how we can accommodate some of the stress points
16:48
Speaker 5: in our life too.
16:50
Speaker 3: So two questions on this. The first is you said ergonomic.
16:55
Speaker 4: What was the word ergo genet ergojenic what does that mean?
17:00
Speaker 5: Yeah, so in like the sport and supplement world, like
17:04
Speaker 5: you take caffeine and it makes you be able to
17:07
Speaker 5: push a little bit harder. So performance enhancing either supplement
17:11
Speaker 5: or additive. So we look at your period and understanding
17:14
Speaker 5: it as being performance enhancing wonderful.
17:17
Speaker 3: And then secondly, what is the best way to determine
17:21
Speaker 3: your patterns and track things?
17:22
Speaker 4: Is there a chart online or how does this work?
17:25
Speaker 5: There's lots of really good femtech out there if you
17:28
Speaker 5: want to go down the tech route. Although, like full disclosure,
17:31
Speaker 5: I am involved with wild Ai. The reason why I'm
17:34
Speaker 5: involved with it is because I think it's the best
17:36
Speaker 5: app that's been created. He uses artificial intelligence to be
17:41
Speaker 5: able to tell you what to expect. So the more
17:44
Speaker 5: data that you put in daily with your check ins,
17:46
Speaker 5: the more it learns your cycle. So you don't have
17:49
Speaker 5: to be looking for day eighteen where you're flat, because
17:53
Speaker 5: the app will tell you, hey, look, this is what happens,
17:55
Speaker 5: So maybe you want to take that into account. Other
17:58
Speaker 5: ones that aren't as involved to give you proper feedback
18:02
Speaker 5: would be something like Fitter Woman. It's a little bit
18:04
Speaker 5: more two D, but you can still track and you
18:06
Speaker 5: can track your cycle, your symptoms, you can understand it.
18:10
Speaker 5: And then if you want to do more of the
18:12
Speaker 5: old fashioned way on your calendar, you put a little
18:15
Speaker 5: star when your period starts and how you feel. So
18:18
Speaker 5: there's lots of different ways to do it.
18:21
Speaker 3: So in your book you talk about some of the
18:23
Speaker 3: differences between men and women's bodies, and you gave this
18:27
Speaker 3: great analogy of a prethrasing a mustang. Can you break
18:30
Speaker 3: that analogy down and what it means in the short
18:33
Speaker 3: term and then the long term.
18:35
Speaker 5: So we see through a history of sport that women
18:38
Speaker 5: are always deemed to be slower and less fatigable. And
18:42
Speaker 5: when we look at some of the race aspects as well,
18:46
Speaker 5: we see that men are always to the gun, really
18:50
Speaker 5: super fast out the gate, but the longer the duration goes,
18:54
Speaker 5: women are superseding men.
18:56
Speaker 4: So this feels like an analogy for life.
18:58
Speaker 6: But okay, it is this.
19:00
Speaker 5: It totally is an analogy for life, right, And if
19:04
Speaker 5: we think about it and we are to scope it,
19:07
Speaker 5: the stats on women versus the stats on men and
19:11
Speaker 5: keeping track is very very small amount of time. And
19:16
Speaker 5: so if we're looking at how all the research has
19:19
Speaker 5: been undone on men to enhance male performance and improve
19:22
Speaker 5: the aggression, the speed, the power. If we are taking
19:26
Speaker 5: that same and putting it into a woman's physiology and
19:30
Speaker 5: we're trying to increase the speed and the power, but
19:32
Speaker 5: we're not looking at the fact that women are naturally
19:35
Speaker 5: endurance bound and we can go longer and we have
19:38
Speaker 5: better cognition, then it's like trying to put in diesel
19:43
Speaker 5: into that Mustang, right, So, all of a sudden, boom,
19:46
Speaker 5: nothing works. And when we start looking at the different
19:50
Speaker 5: protocols that have been designed and the guidelines that have
19:54
Speaker 5: been designed and applying it to women, it really slows
19:57
Speaker 5: down through their performance potential. So I don't think women
20:01
Speaker 5: have actually reached their performance potential because we haven't really
20:04
Speaker 5: taken that eye out of that male lens and look
20:07
Speaker 5: specifically at female physiology to be like, we need to
20:11
Speaker 5: look at how we can do strength and strength blocks better,
20:16
Speaker 5: endurance and anaerobic capacity blocks better, the recovery metrics, all
20:20
Speaker 5: of these things right. And so if we start applying
20:24
Speaker 5: the research and understanding women's physiology and then we put
20:28
Speaker 5: it into that prius, all of a sudden, it's like
20:30
Speaker 5: taking that Mustang engine and putting into the prius that
20:33
Speaker 5: can keep going but at a top end speed.
20:37
Speaker 3: You must have received so much pushback when you first
20:40
Speaker 3: started talking about your research and your findings.
20:42
Speaker 5: Oh, I still do today, and my PhD students do
20:47
Speaker 5: as well. So a couple of my PhD students are
20:49
Speaker 5: doing more clinical work like sex differences in concussions and
20:54
Speaker 5: looking at mistral cycle phase based ACL reconstruction rehab, so
20:59
Speaker 5: looking at using the mistrual cycle to improve the outcomes
21:02
Speaker 5: of surgery. And so many of the physicians and stuff
21:05
Speaker 5: that they talked to about doing this so like, well,
21:09
Speaker 5: why are you putting minstreal cycle into your PhD.
21:12
Speaker 6: It's going to take forever to do it. It's too difficult.
21:15
Speaker 6: And they're like, because there's a high amount.
21:18
Speaker 5: Of female athletes that need help, and I'm not gonna
21:21
Speaker 5: not do it just because you say it's too difficult.
21:24
Speaker 5: And this is what twenty twenty one. So it's still
21:28
Speaker 5: across the board.
21:28
Speaker 3: If you look at records set at the Olympics, the
21:31
Speaker 3: average difference between gold medal performances by men and women
21:35
Speaker 3: is about ten percent across all events. The perception is
21:40
Speaker 3: that female athletes are just so far behind men, and
21:43
Speaker 3: that's you're saying that's not really the case.
21:46
Speaker 6: It's not.
21:47
Speaker 5: And if we look at the protocols that Olympic athletes
21:50
Speaker 5: are using, it's based on male data. So, like I
21:53
Speaker 5: was saying earlier, we need to look at how are
21:56
Speaker 5: we going to train women to reach the performance potential?
22:00
Speaker 5: And we haven't done that yet. So if we're looking
22:03
Speaker 5: at that top tier and shrinking that gap, I think
22:06
Speaker 5: that if we start really implementing specific protocols and guidelines
22:11
Speaker 5: that are specific to biologically sex women, then that gap
22:16
Speaker 5: is going to shrink even more. But we haven't done that,
22:18
Speaker 5: and we haven't seen it because again the science is
22:22
Speaker 5: lagging behind the practice.
22:24
Speaker 3: So I cover some sporting events as a reporter, and
22:28
Speaker 3: oftentimes it's basketball.
22:30
Speaker 4: I'll do like the All.
22:31
Speaker 3: Star Game, which is sort of like a fun game
22:34
Speaker 3: in the middle of the year or usually in February,
22:37
Speaker 3: and on the sidelines we always kind of talk about
22:41
Speaker 3: will there ever be an All Star game where men
22:44
Speaker 3: and women are playing together? Is it crazy to think
22:48
Speaker 3: that there could be team sports where men and women
22:51
Speaker 3: play together in the future.
22:53
Speaker 6: I don't think so.
22:55
Speaker 5: I don't. So if we look at kids on the
22:58
Speaker 5: playground and girls and boys are playing soccer and everything,
23:02
Speaker 5: and they love it, and they're girls are right in
23:04
Speaker 5: there playing against the boys, and they haven't been taught
23:07
Speaker 5: yet that boys and girls need to be separate.
23:09
Speaker 6: And then you start.
23:10
Speaker 5: Seeing around ten, eleven, twelve years old, there's this huge shift, right,
23:15
Speaker 5: So we have this division of boys you go this
23:18
Speaker 5: way to play this soccer, girls, you go this way
23:20
Speaker 5: to play soccer. And then we have the onset of
23:23
Speaker 5: puberty as well, which is interesting in the fact that
23:29
Speaker 5: all the protocols again are still geared towards boys. So
23:32
Speaker 5: we see that at the onset of puberty, boys will
23:35
Speaker 5: lean up, they'll get fitter, they'll get faster, they'll get
23:37
Speaker 5: more aggressive. But what happens at puberty with girls is
23:41
Speaker 5: their hips widen, their shoulders widen, their body composition changes,
23:46
Speaker 5: and they don't feel like they can be successful in
23:48
Speaker 5: sport because they're not re taught the mechanics in their
23:51
Speaker 5: new bodies. So girls drop out of sport, right, So right,
23:55
Speaker 5: there's the failing. First, we're taking them away from playing
23:58
Speaker 5: against each other, so we get this mindset that boys
24:01
Speaker 5: and girls shouldn't be competing against each other.
24:04
Speaker 6: And then we get to.
24:05
Speaker 5: Puberty and we don't change what we're doing to improve
24:08
Speaker 5: the performance and the confidence and girls. So it's this
24:11
Speaker 5: whole shift at such an early age. So if we
24:14
Speaker 5: bring it back and we look at, Okay, what are
24:17
Speaker 5: the steps we're going to do to remove this cultural
24:20
Speaker 5: barrier and we improve the training practices of women. When
24:25
Speaker 5: we look at that top end and we're looking at
24:27
Speaker 5: the All Star Games, it shouldn't be too far away
24:30
Speaker 5: where women and men are playing in the same game.
24:34
Speaker 3: I remember growing up watching This is very silly compared
24:38
Speaker 3: to the research that you do, but I remember growing
24:40
Speaker 3: up watching like Survivor or Real World road Rules, and
24:44
Speaker 3: they would have challenges with men and women together, and
24:48
Speaker 3: certain challenges it seemed like the men would do better,
24:50
Speaker 3: and certain challenges the women would do better, and then
24:53
Speaker 3: there would be some sort of surprises where like a
24:57
Speaker 3: challenge required upper body strength and a woman would win
25:00
Speaker 3: and everyone would be shocked. Are you saying that some
25:04
Speaker 3: of these physical differences that we've all been conditioned to
25:08
Speaker 3: think are biological could actually be changed with training, with eating,
25:14
Speaker 3: different eating patterns, and really understanding our hormones.
25:19
Speaker 5: Absolutely, especially the upper body strength myth, Because when we
25:24
Speaker 5: are looking specifically at the research and we see that
25:27
Speaker 5: we are comparing men to women and putting them through
25:30
Speaker 5: strength programs. Women generally start less strong because they have
25:35
Speaker 5: been taught how to do upper body strength, but they
25:39
Speaker 5: catch up and they end up being equal to the
25:41
Speaker 5: men that are in the same program. It's that catchup phase,
25:45
Speaker 5: so they don't have as much muscle bulk or mass,
25:48
Speaker 5: but relative to body weight, they can have the same strength.
25:52
Speaker 5: So if we're doing push up or a push up
25:54
Speaker 5: or pull up competitions, the women can actually supersede the
25:58
Speaker 5: men because when they get that say strength per body weight,
26:01
Speaker 5: women also are more endurant, so they can go longer.
26:05
Speaker 5: So if we're looking at how we're training women and
26:08
Speaker 5: we catch them up and we train them properly, then
26:11
Speaker 5: they can go head to head with men in a
26:13
Speaker 5: competition like that because it's that myth that women are
26:17
Speaker 5: weaker upper body.
26:19
Speaker 4: I'm floored.
26:21
Speaker 3: Are there any major myths that come to mind that
26:25
Speaker 3: you can dispel physical like physical myths like that?
26:29
Speaker 6: Oh gosh, there's so many. Where do you want to
26:31
Speaker 6: start if there's like two or three.
26:33
Speaker 4: That you could think of?
26:34
Speaker 3: Because I just hearing this is like, it's so empowering
26:39
Speaker 3: to me.
26:40
Speaker 5: Yeah, and when I think about it and talk to
26:43
Speaker 5: other women about it and they understand it, then they're
26:46
Speaker 5: not afraid to like starting to CrossFit and start trying
26:50
Speaker 5: to do upper body work and trying to do Olympic lifts.
26:53
Speaker 6: I think a lot of.
26:55
Speaker 5: The misnomer is coming from absolute weight that people can
27:00
Speaker 5: lift versus relative to body weight, because if we are
27:05
Speaker 5: training women properly, then the amount of weight that they
27:08
Speaker 5: can lift and push relative to their absolute body weight
27:12
Speaker 5: is similar to men. We know that the sex differences
27:15
Speaker 5: disappear when they get trained appropriately, But then the benefit
27:19
Speaker 5: there is that women's bodies by design are able to
27:24
Speaker 5: store carbohydrate and use more free fatty acids. So when
27:28
Speaker 5: we start looking at things like metabolic efficiency to make
27:31
Speaker 5: women and men able to go longer, further faster, it
27:36
Speaker 5: doesn't work for women. So if we take that whole
27:39
Speaker 5: fasted training out, the ketogenic diet out, because women's bodies
27:43
Speaker 5: are already there, they can already do what those diets
27:46
Speaker 5: are supposed to do for them, and we put in
27:48
Speaker 5: more carbohydrate, then the women can actually keep up and
27:52
Speaker 5: or supersede the men. And it's looking at the different
27:55
Speaker 5: fueling mechanics that women do because there's sex differences the
27:58
Speaker 5: way our bodies fuel during exercise. Not only are there
28:02
Speaker 5: sex differences, but then you also have the minstrual cycle,
28:04
Speaker 5: phase differences, the way we fuel during exercise.
28:08
Speaker 6: So there's so.
28:09
Speaker 5: Many different things where it's like I'll look at people
28:13
Speaker 5: in the gym and I'll see like this guy trying
28:15
Speaker 5: to teach a woman how to lift or telling you
28:18
Speaker 5: how to recover or how to eat, and it takes
28:21
Speaker 5: every ounce in my body not to go in there
28:23
Speaker 5: and step in and be like, actually, no, this is
28:26
Speaker 5: what you need to do, This is how you need
28:28
Speaker 5: to lift, These are the things you need to be
28:30
Speaker 5: looking for. Your Q angle is different, so the angle
28:33
Speaker 5: from your hip to your knee is different, so your
28:35
Speaker 5: foot placement should be different.
28:37
Speaker 6: The way you're doing reps and sets.
28:39
Speaker 5: Should be different according to your body type, the way
28:42
Speaker 5: your muscles respond, what phase the minstrual cycle you're in,
28:46
Speaker 5: and recovery again is different. So what you're eating right
28:50
Speaker 5: after exercise should be different, and the amounts that you're
28:52
Speaker 5: eating should be different than what these guidelines say.
28:56
Speaker 4: You talk about the term shrink it and pink it.
28:58
Speaker 4: What is that.
29:00
Speaker 5: Shrinking and pink This comes from so many years in
29:03
Speaker 5: the cycling industry and knowing on the inside how a
29:08
Speaker 5: lot of companies work where they want to get the
29:11
Speaker 5: market for women, and so the marketing companies come up
29:15
Speaker 5: with the idea of how we market to women, and
29:19
Speaker 5: maybeing a scientist and a physiologist, I know that marketing
29:22
Speaker 5: often trumps science, well not often, almost always trump science
29:25
Speaker 5: because marketing has big dollars in a big push. So
29:28
Speaker 5: in the industry, they would take a bike or clothing,
29:32
Speaker 5: they make it a little bit smaller, throw some pink
29:35
Speaker 5: on it, and say now it's a woman's product. So
29:37
Speaker 5: whenever we see something that's tied up and marketed just
29:41
Speaker 5: for women, the question always is did you shrink and
29:44
Speaker 5: pink it? Or did you actually do the research to
29:46
Speaker 5: make it applicable to women? So shrink and pink is
29:50
Speaker 5: the kind of the funny thing where you're like, what
29:52
Speaker 5: a great phrase, what does it mean? But when you're
29:54
Speaker 5: looking at specific products for women, or diets for women
29:58
Speaker 5: or all these programs for women, I often go, oh,
30:01
Speaker 5: it's shrink and pink because it wasn't researched for women,
30:05
Speaker 5: or they've generalized for men and made it smaller and
30:07
Speaker 5: thrown some pink on the package to make it so pretty.
30:11
Speaker 5: It goes all the way we talk about like women's
30:14
Speaker 5: shampoo or razors. It's often more expensive and either the
30:18
Speaker 5: same or a lesser than product, and exactly shrink it
30:23
Speaker 5: and pink it kind of applies to all of it.
30:25
Speaker 5: So I'd never thought of that.
30:27
Speaker 6: Yeah, even haircuts. What do you mean so men have
30:32
Speaker 6: long hair too?
30:33
Speaker 2: Right?
30:33
Speaker 3: Yeah?
30:33
Speaker 5: Be men will go to a barber and get a
30:35
Speaker 5: trim and it's like thirty bucks, And if a woman
30:38
Speaker 5: were to go to try to get a long hair trim,
30:40
Speaker 5: it's like a hundred bucks.
30:41
Speaker 4: It's like, what why we have the.
30:43
Speaker 5: Same length hair and it's the same haircut, but you're
30:46
Speaker 5: charging me seventy dollars long.
30:48
Speaker 4: You're right, we're block cutting an inch off exactly. Wow,
30:53
Speaker 4: I know it goes everywhere, it really does.
30:56
Speaker 3: I'm really into sneakers, and there's this complaint amongst the
31:01
Speaker 3: sneaker community that the women's shoes are just not as
31:06
Speaker 3: cool as the men, Like we always have to buy
31:08
Speaker 3: a small man's shoe because they don't make they just
31:12
Speaker 3: make like pink nikes, you know, And it's like, no,
31:15
Speaker 3: that's not.
31:15
Speaker 4: What we're looking for.
31:17
Speaker 6: Exactly.
31:18
Speaker 5: My kid even says that really, yeah, She's like, Mommy,
31:22
Speaker 5: I really.
31:22
Speaker 6: Like these shoes, but I hate pink. Why are all
31:24
Speaker 6: the girls shoes pink? That's a good question. Great, do
31:28
Speaker 6: you want to get the boys shoes?
31:30
Speaker 2: Yeah?
31:30
Speaker 6: Because I want blue ones.
31:32
Speaker 3: It's funny too, because if it's all about money, like
31:35
Speaker 3: they're just so many companies are missing out in so
31:37
Speaker 3: many ways. There's a lot of studies about gender bias
31:41
Speaker 3: and how it can result in women receiving less than
31:44
Speaker 3: optimal health care. Seventy percent of the people affected by
31:47
Speaker 3: chronic pain conditions are women, but eighty percent of the
31:50
Speaker 3: research into pain is conducted on male humans or rodents,
31:54
Speaker 3: which is full circle to what we spoke about at
31:56
Speaker 3: the beginning. Right, For women that are feeling like they
32:01
Speaker 3: aren't being heard or believed at a doctor's office at
32:05
Speaker 3: a hospital, how can you be an advocate for yourself?
32:10
Speaker 5: If you're going to your GP and they're not listening
32:12
Speaker 5: to you, then find another one, because there are plenty
32:17
Speaker 5: of gps out there.
32:19
Speaker 6: If you're in a.
32:20
Speaker 5: Hospital and you're like in the r or something and
32:23
Speaker 5: they're not listening to you, this is the hard one, right,
32:27
Speaker 5: because we see a lot of women who go in
32:29
Speaker 5: with chronic pain, or they go in with shortness of
32:33
Speaker 5: breath or some other signs and symptoms of a heart
32:35
Speaker 5: attack that are not typical male. And you have to
32:38
Speaker 5: make some noise, so you might go and grab a
32:42
Speaker 5: nurse or someone else and say, hey, this is real,
32:45
Speaker 5: but you have to be able to talk, or you
32:47
Speaker 5: have to have whoever's brought you in understand and then
32:50
Speaker 5: they can push an advocate for you. Starting to change though,
32:55
Speaker 5: And I'll say this is the only positive thing out
32:58
Speaker 5: of COVID, the fact that the outcomes for women are
33:03
Speaker 5: different from men, and the outcomes for women are so
33:06
Speaker 5: much more positive, from the less hospitalization rates to better
33:12
Speaker 5: outcomes on the vaccine, less side effects, that the whole
33:17
Speaker 5: entire global medical community has finally sat up and been like, what,
33:22
Speaker 5: how is this? There are sex differences in this right, it's.
33:26
Speaker 3: The first time I heard or thought about.
33:28
Speaker 5: It ever, right, ever, And if it had been different,
33:33
Speaker 5: if the outcomes for men have been better than women,
33:35
Speaker 5: it wouldn't have changed anything. But now that all of
33:39
Speaker 5: this has come out and we're seeing, like long, COVID
33:42
Speaker 5: is worse for women if they don't get the vaccine,
33:46
Speaker 5: but the vaccine helps them avoid long COVID doesn't make
33:49
Speaker 5: a difference for men if we're looking at the resistance
33:53
Speaker 5: of getting into the hospital as well. And it has
33:56
Speaker 5: to do with the fact that women's immune system changes
33:59
Speaker 5: across menstrual cycle. So women's bodies are really, really, really
34:04
Speaker 5: adept at fighting off virus and bacteria in the low
34:08
Speaker 5: hormone phase and then in the high hormone phase become
34:12
Speaker 5: very inflammatory, and we have a really strong mass cell
34:15
Speaker 5: and inflammatory response in the high hormone phase, so we're
34:19
Speaker 5: better able to switch immune responses because naturally, over the
34:24
Speaker 5: month or over our cycle, we do. This is why
34:28
Speaker 5: the outcomes for COVID are so much better for women.
34:31
Speaker 5: And now that that's come out, the medical society is
34:34
Speaker 5: now like putting out mandates we need to go back
34:37
Speaker 5: and look at some of the chemotherapy research because the
34:39
Speaker 5: outcomes for women with breast cancer are really fantastic because
34:44
Speaker 5: it's been specifically done on women, but other cancers not
34:47
Speaker 5: so much. Right, So it's having everyone take a pause
34:51
Speaker 5: and step back and be like, hey, Okay, we really
34:53
Speaker 5: need to look at this. So if we can say
34:56
Speaker 5: anything about this everlasting, incredibly stressful global pandemic, it has
35:03
Speaker 5: been able to come and make the medical community go,
35:06
Speaker 5: we really need to look at women differently.
35:09
Speaker 3: As I was researching you in preparation for this, and
35:12
Speaker 3: now after hearing you talk, all of this came because
35:17
Speaker 3: you had this instinct to challenge the status quo, and
35:21
Speaker 3: you had the guts to ask questions and the courage
35:26
Speaker 3: to continue asking questions when people were denying or pushing back.
35:33
Speaker 4: Where does that come from?
35:35
Speaker 5: If you were talked to my mom, she would be like,
35:38
Speaker 5: I never would imagine you being where you are, because
35:41
Speaker 5: when I was a kid, I was so quiet and
35:44
Speaker 5: shy that we'd have a substitute teacher and I would
35:47
Speaker 5: vomit and my mom would have to come pick me
35:48
Speaker 5: up from school.
35:50
Speaker 6: Was that shy, right?
35:53
Speaker 5: But growing up in a military family, I had it
35:56
Speaker 5: instilled in me that equality and fairness is some that
36:00
Speaker 5: everyone should strive for. So I had this like burn
36:06
Speaker 5: of if something doesn't seem right or just it really
36:09
Speaker 5: makes me angry and I want.
36:11
Speaker 6: To set it right.
36:13
Speaker 5: So the public speaking and the ability to ask questions
36:18
Speaker 5: came from a very uncomfortable spot where I still get
36:22
Speaker 5: very uncomfortable doing public speaking and pushing the dogma. But
36:29
Speaker 5: if you don't get uncomfortable and challenge then you never
36:32
Speaker 5: know how close to that equitible and that justice that
36:37
Speaker 5: you can get. So asking the questions and being uncomfortable
36:41
Speaker 5: and putting yourself in a different spot will push the
36:44
Speaker 5: boundary to be able to get that equality and find
36:47
Speaker 5: that justice. And that's that burn that I still have.
36:52
Speaker 3: So as an environmental exercise physiologist and nutrition scientists specializing
36:57
Speaker 3: in sex differences, I am so curious as to your
37:01
Speaker 3: opinion on trans athletes competing in sports against athletes of
37:05
Speaker 3: the other biological sex.
37:07
Speaker 4: Where does the research stand. What do you think?
37:11
Speaker 5: Well, there's really limited research at the moment, and I
37:14
Speaker 5: find it very interesting because I'm in this working group
37:18
Speaker 5: that's specific to women's health and performance, and one of
37:23
Speaker 5: my colleagues and friends is a pure physiologist and she
37:27
Speaker 5: does a lot of work like with WATA looking at
37:30
Speaker 5: anti doping, understands the cellular mechanisms, but is very much
37:34
Speaker 5: a bench scientist and very like this is black and white.
37:38
Speaker 5: So if we look at physiology and we know that
37:41
Speaker 5: from birth there are different differences between men and women
37:44
Speaker 5: that we need to count for, and at the onset
37:47
Speaker 5: of puberty, with testosterone, you get all these male sporting advantages.
37:52
Speaker 5: So in her mindset, we're like, there's distinct disadvantage if
37:58
Speaker 5: we have this competition of transgendered athletes in just your
38:03
Speaker 5: normal sex binary categories. And then my other really good
38:06
Speaker 5: friend and colleague is a sociologist, and she's like, you
38:11
Speaker 5: can't be that simple. It's not black and white. We
38:14
Speaker 5: have to look at all the sociocultural aspects that bring
38:17
Speaker 5: a person to sport. So if we're looking at how
38:21
Speaker 5: people identify and how sport empowers them, that it is
38:25
Speaker 5: absolutely not fair to a transgendered athlete to tell them
38:29
Speaker 5: they can't compete. So I sit between the two and
38:33
Speaker 5: I lean towards the sociology. From a physiological standpoint, we
38:37
Speaker 5: can see how hormones can change and alter, and we
38:41
Speaker 5: can see that absolute levels are what the IOC is
38:45
Speaker 5: calling out on. But it's not the absolute levels of
38:47
Speaker 5: testosterone that affect performance, and it's not necessarily the epigenetic
38:53
Speaker 5: exposure that people have had throughout their lifespan. It comes
38:57
Speaker 5: down to what people believe and how they feel empowered
39:02
Speaker 5: with sport and what their entire upbringing has been. Because
39:06
Speaker 5: if we look at transgendered women and they haven't felt
39:11
Speaker 5: accepted until they found sport. Now to say I'm sorry,
39:16
Speaker 5: you don't count, you can't compete, that is just so
39:21
Speaker 5: cruel and inhumane that we really have to take a
39:25
Speaker 5: step back and be like, Okay, so what is sport about?
39:28
Speaker 6: What is the Olympics about? What is it?
39:30
Speaker 5: It's about equality, it's looking at the best of the best.
39:34
Speaker 5: And I know I'm going to you know, like, I've
39:36
Speaker 5: never really talked about this outside of like our inner circles.
39:40
Speaker 5: But when I think about a lot of my friends
39:44
Speaker 5: who are still competing on the top stage and they
39:47
Speaker 5: feel very disempowered because they are now competing against a
39:51
Speaker 5: trans woman, And we look at the background behind it again,
39:57
Speaker 5: if we look at how are CIS women are being
40:01
Speaker 5: trained and the performance potential that isn't there because we
40:05
Speaker 5: haven't trained them properly. There's still a lot of work
40:08
Speaker 5: and research to be done to make it an even
40:10
Speaker 5: playing field. But when we look at how sport is
40:13
Speaker 5: supposed to be all encompassing and accepting, we can't take
40:16
Speaker 5: that definitive line in the sand and say, well, you
40:20
Speaker 5: were born this way and you've had these exposures from
40:24
Speaker 5: hormones and your hormone level sits at here, so you
40:27
Speaker 5: can't compete because it absolutely is not the right way
40:32
Speaker 5: to approach these things. In the fact that it's not
40:36
Speaker 5: black and white. We're not algorithms and we aren't designed
40:40
Speaker 5: to be algorithms. We have to look at people's lived
40:42
Speaker 5: experiences and bring that into the forefront too.
40:45
Speaker 3: You mentioned at the beginning of this interview that our
40:48
Speaker 3: psychology can oftentimes overpower our physiology. So I think that's
40:54
Speaker 3: really wonderful to hear. Oh thanks, I have some rapid
40:59
Speaker 3: fires for you ready. Oh boy, okay, your favorite post
41:03
Speaker 3: workout food or meal.
41:06
Speaker 6: I'm in a hold on my cup right here.
41:09
Speaker 5: My favorite post workout is two shots of espresso, some
41:17
Speaker 5: protein powder, almond milk, and a frozen banana all blended
41:21
Speaker 5: up together to give me a nice cold, little frozen
41:24
Speaker 5: power latte.
41:25
Speaker 4: That sounds delicious. And you don't drink that before. You
41:27
Speaker 4: drink it after, yeh after.
41:29
Speaker 5: I could have it before too, because it does do
41:32
Speaker 5: the same thing that gives you the boost, It gives
41:34
Speaker 5: you the fuel. But I walk in the door like
41:37
Speaker 5: I did a hard ride this morning, and I walk
41:39
Speaker 5: in the door and the first thing I wanted was
41:41
Speaker 5: that hit of caffeine with that cold like little smoothie banana,
41:45
Speaker 5: knowing that everything was going to go make things right.
41:49
Speaker 3: One tactic or tool that you found improves your sleep.
41:54
Speaker 5: Actually drinking something cold before bed and not watching screens
41:59
Speaker 5: before bed, and it really.
42:02
Speaker 6: Improved my slow wat sleep.
42:04
Speaker 5: And I didn't really start doing that until I started
42:07
Speaker 5: doing some research with Whip and understanding how the two
42:11
Speaker 5: hours before bed, like you don't want to eat, and
42:14
Speaker 5: if you do, you don't want to have a lot
42:16
Speaker 5: of high fat ca have some protein. Understanding how those
42:18
Speaker 5: little nuances can interrupt your deep reparative sleep.
42:22
Speaker 4: What is a book that changed your life?
42:25
Speaker 5: It sounds very cheesy, but Sidartha, really I think that
42:29
Speaker 5: was one of the first books that allowed me to
42:33
Speaker 5: understand that it was okay to ask questions and seek
42:37
Speaker 5: that justice, especially when you're reading it from different perspectives.
42:41
Speaker 4: How do you approach trying to instill confidence in your daughter?
42:46
Speaker 5: She often dwells on things that have happened, like the
42:48
Speaker 5: day before, and I'm always I ask her about how
42:52
Speaker 5: she feels about it, like how did it happen?
42:55
Speaker 6: How do you feel? What do you feel now?
42:58
Speaker 5: So she really talks about how she felt, what it
43:01
Speaker 5: made her do, how she responded, and then I always
43:05
Speaker 5: ask her, well, can we do anything about it now,
43:07
Speaker 5: and she's like, well no, I'm like exactly. So we
43:10
Speaker 5: understand it, we feel about it, and then we put
43:12
Speaker 5: it in the past because we can't change the past,
43:15
Speaker 5: but we can learn from it. So what are we
43:17
Speaker 5: going to do the next time we encounter that? So
43:19
Speaker 5: we talk about what the next step would be if
43:21
Speaker 5: she encounters that situation again. And this is allowing her
43:25
Speaker 5: to navigate bullies at school, the mean girls at school,
43:30
Speaker 5: and unfortunately, we're going to have mean girls for the
43:32
Speaker 5: rest of our lives. So being able to allow her
43:36
Speaker 5: to understand the situation, talk about how she felt, and
43:39
Speaker 5: then find a solution for the next time she feels
43:42
Speaker 5: empowered to step up and say something. And I've seen
43:46
Speaker 5: that happen in the past, like six months, that she's
43:48
Speaker 5: been encountering a mean girl at school, and she's like,
43:52
Speaker 5: she's not so mean anymore because I'm able to tell
43:54
Speaker 5: her that she's being mean.
43:56
Speaker 6: So I'm like, yes, it's good.
43:58
Speaker 3: That's such a great tool because I actually on this
44:00
Speaker 3: podcast we talk about like our twenties a lot, and
44:03
Speaker 3: I felt so frustrated at work or in relationship, almost
44:08
Speaker 3: wholly because I did not have the words to communicate
44:12
Speaker 3: how I was feeling. So to have those tools as
44:14
Speaker 3: a young kid is incredible.
44:16
Speaker 5: I didn't have them either. I come from a family
44:18
Speaker 5: where you don't talk about your feelings. You battle them
44:21
Speaker 5: up and then you can tell if someone's mad at you,
44:23
Speaker 5: because it's like passive aggressive quietness.
44:25
Speaker 6: And I don't want her.
44:26
Speaker 4: To be like that.
44:26
Speaker 5: So I've been really working hard as a parent to
44:30
Speaker 5: understand how to give her those tools, and I'm finding
44:32
Speaker 5: that they're working, which makes me super happy because I
44:35
Speaker 5: don't want her to make some of the same mistakes
44:38
Speaker 5: that I have, because that's part of the learning process,
44:41
Speaker 5: especially as a parent. You do these things, You make
44:43
Speaker 5: these mistakes, and you want to make sure that they
44:45
Speaker 5: aren't repeated because you've learned from them. Let's past and
44:47
Speaker 5: knowledge on.
44:48
Speaker 3: Oh right, you always hope the next generation is bigger, faster, stronger, better.
44:55
Speaker 3: So we have fifty two cards at random. Tell me
44:58
Speaker 3: when you want me to stop? Oh boy, okay, stop okay?
45:04
Speaker 4: Who do people say you remind them of.
45:08
Speaker 6: Drew Barrymore.
45:12
Speaker 4: That's I would not think about that until you just
45:15
Speaker 4: said it. I was going to say, Julianne Moore.
45:17
Speaker 6: Oh, I'll take that one. Yeah, you really remind.
45:20
Speaker 3: Me that on her.
45:21
Speaker 4: That's funny. Okay.
45:23
Speaker 3: The last question I ask everybody is what is the
45:26
Speaker 3: smartest decision you've ever made?
45:29
Speaker 6: Oh?
45:30
Speaker 5: I don't know if I've made decisions that have been smart.
45:33
Speaker 5: I just kind of all into things. But no, I
45:36
Speaker 5: really will say one of the smartest decisions in hindsight
45:40
Speaker 5: was leaving on a whim the US and moving to
45:45
Speaker 5: New Zealand just because I was like, I'm twenty six, single,
45:50
Speaker 5: no attachments, why not? And being in a different culture
45:54
Speaker 5: and having the opportunity now to make connections in the States,
45:58
Speaker 5: down here, all over the world has been really interesting
46:02
Speaker 5: in career choices. So yeah, hard decision and retrospectively, I
46:07
Speaker 5: don't know if I would have done it again, but
46:08
Speaker 5: then if I hadn't, then I wouldn't be where I
46:12
Speaker 5: am now.
46:13
Speaker 4: Thank you for your time.
46:14
Speaker 3: I know you have a lot of things going on
46:16
Speaker 3: in your life and I appreciate it.
46:18
Speaker 6: No worry, it has been fun. Thanks for having me.
46:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think people are going to learn so much
46:23
Speaker 3: from you. If they want to find out more, where
46:25
Speaker 3: can they find you and learn more from you.
46:28
Speaker 5: So our website is doctor Stacysimms dot com and that
46:30
Speaker 5: has like all of our courses, our book launches, coming up,
46:34
Speaker 5: keeping track of everything that I'm doing. And then of
46:36
Speaker 5: course on social media Instagram and Facebook is doctor Stacy Simms.
46:41
Speaker 5: So those are the three big places you can find me.
46:45
Speaker 6: Twitter.
46:45
Speaker 5: I'm also there, but that's more academic scope, which could
46:48
Speaker 5: be kind of boring to everybody.
46:51
Speaker 4: Thank you, all right, Today is a good day to
47:10
Speaker 4: have a good day.
47:11
Speaker 6: I'll see you next yeah,