Science Backed Training, Sleeping and Fasting Protocols for Perimenopause with Dr Stacy Sims

9:08AM Oct 11, 2022

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Intro

Dr Stacy Sims

Keywords:

people

women

exercise

perimenopause

body composition

training

progesterone

hormones

recovery

parasympathetic

run

body

fasted

little bit

protein

eat

sodium

intermittent fasting

lose

bit

Instead of asking why I feel so lazy, we need to ask ourselves why even more harassed?

Welcome to the high performance health podcast with your host Angela Foster. The show where we talk about everything you need to break through limits and achieve a high performance mind body and lifestyle.

Welcome to another episode of the High Performance health podcast. To all my lovely longtime listeners a very warm welcome to this episode today. And for those of you that are new I know we have lots of new listeners. Welcome to the high performance health podcast this is the show where I talk about everything you need to optimise your mind body and spirit we dive into hormones, fitness, longevity biohacking fasting. There are tonnes and tonnes of episodes that you can go back and listen to. But firstly, welcome to the show. And this this today's episode, I should say is not going to disappoint. I know this been long awaited, I'm so excited to say to announce that my guest today is Dr. Stacey Sims. So we're going to be diving all into fitness and longevity and fasting and why Stacy believes that you should be pre fueling your exercise and why exercise Trump's fasting for autophagy in most cases, and particularly for women and women's health and balancing their hormones. Dr. Stacey Sims is a forward thinking international exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist who aims to revolutionise exercise, nutrition and performance for women. She has directed research programmes at Stanford at University and the University of Waikato, focusing on female athlete health and performance and pushing the dogma to improve research on all women. She has two amazing books raw and Her most recent book that we're going to be diving into today. Next level, both fantastic books. If you haven't, haven't read those yet, then definitely head over to Amazon and get your copy. Also make sure you're following Dr. Stacey Sims on Instagram because she releases really helpful content content on there, and links to her blogs and the latest scientific research that she's doing. But without further delay, let me introduce you to a second time guest on the show Dr. Stacey Sims. So I'm so excited to have Dr. Stacey Sims back on the show. That was an amazingly popular podcast last time. Stacy has a new book out next level your guide to kicking ass feeling great and crushing goals through menopause and beyond which is brilliant. If you haven't read it yet. I highly recommend it. But first of all, Stacy, very welcome warm. Welcome back to the show.

Thank you, I'm looking at us and you're like sleeveless and I'm in like puffy jacket. I understand the world, but the size of the world.

I know for once so we were just saying offline, just how we're having such an amazing summer here in the UK, which is really, really unusual. So what prompted next level? Brilliant, you know, roar was an amazing book and even doing lots of courses following it. What prompted you to write next level and kind of look at menopausal women?

Oh, when we wrote roar? There were so we only had one chapter on menopause. And I've got so many questions about it. Like where do I get more information? And I started looking at some of my friends who were getting into the early 40s and asking questions. And I had done quite a bit of research with Marsha Szczepanik, who was the primary investigator for the Women's Health Initiative. So it was kind of sitting in there in the back of my head of all these things, but didn't realise really, that it wasn't relatively out there for people to access. So as I started getting more and more questions from the active population of women who were like, What is going on? How do I get more information? So we need to write a book about this. So Celine, actually was my co author was one of the people was like, Yeah, I don't really know if there's room for this until she started experiencing things. And I think she mentioned it in the foreword that she emailed me and I told her do a few things that she's like, Yeah, okay, we got to read this stuff. And it's amazing, like how many people were just gravitating to it? Because there isn't anything really out there that speaks to our population of active women.

Yeah, no, there isn't. And I think the one of the things that was really interesting to me, for me, she was at the front, when you talk about and you show the graphs of what's happening in a woman's body, in terms of the way her fat mass is changing. And so many people that I see they come to me, and they might even be taking hormone replacement therapy and they say, you know, we sleep Scott better, my brain fog has lifted, I've got less anxiety, but what the hell is going on with my body? And why am I getting all this belly fat? And you talk there about how in the in the three to four years leading up to menopause, we see the biggest body composition changes. Can you briefly explain what's going on? Because I think we first need to understand what's going on right before we can correct it.

Yeah, so when we're talking about perimenopause, and as we were talking about offline If you have early perimenopause and late perimenopause, early kind of perimenopause, you'll start seeing some changes in sleep patterns and this is an indication your hormones are switching. But as we start to get too late, perimenopause, you're having less and less Abila Tori cycles, if any. So you are not having the same ratio of oestrogen progesterone you're becoming more oestrogen dominant progesterone is flatlining. And your body's responding to that because oestrogen progesterone affect every system of the body. And they're tightly regulated by the same area in the brain that controls performance. So when we start losing oestrogen progesterone, we start seeing this massive amount of changes in our body composition because we no longer have these hormones working for us to keep our body composition in check. So if we're looking at oestrogen and it's tightly tied to the myosin filament of the actin myosin proteins for muscle contraction, when oestrogen starts to get out of whack, then your muscle contraction isn't as strong. So you don't have the signal to keep that muscle and you start to lose more of that muscle mass. And we also become more anabolic ly resistant because we don't have oestrogen, which is women's testosterone. So we don't have the signal to build mass. And progesterone is really important for maintaining, like glucose homeostasis, and keeping us from having that deep, abdominal fat. So we start losing that we see all these changes. So when we're talking about these body composition changes that are usually associated with menopause, people are like, I'm not menopausal yet. But I'm having all these changes. It's because it's the the years leading up to menopause, that we have to really instigate different techniques in our training in different nutritional strategies to offset what these hormones are no longer doing for us, I like to say we need to find an external stress to create a signal of adaptation, the way the hormones used to support our body.

That makes a lot of sense. And I think, I think is what women are seeing isn't it is effectively seeing body composition, but in the way that they don't want. So it's not so much that they're putting on tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of weight. But it's almost like most most people come and they'll say, I want to lose less than seven pounds. But I want to great gain more muscle and have more tone. And it seems like in perimenopause, everything's shifting the other way, you're kind of instead of losing around seven pounds, you're gaining around seven pounds, and you're having less muscle mass and more body fat. So you kind of go a bit soft? Yes. So we need we know we need to provide like a significant trigger. And you've been saying and in the book, there's really, really helpful chapters about each of these different strategies that women can use, if we stick first with lifting. So one of the things you say is you need to lift heavy shit. That's the thing that women need to really do for that trigger. How often do they need to be doing this because I've kind of seen a variance, you've got women who are fueling their bodies and doing strength training really, to basically facilitate better workouts in terms of their athleticism. And then you'll have women that are listening who are doing this because they want body composition results. And I've seen a difference. And And I'm curious as to your point of view, I know you talk about sort of two to three times a week, I've noticed that if you want body composition in terms of aesthetics, it seems to be more like three to four times so we could you kind of clarify how much strength training we need to be doing.

So the bare minimum, and it's written for people who have never lifted heavy, that's why we're like, Okay, two to three times just to really phase yourself in understanding of good technique, and then you start adding load. As you become more trained with heavy lifting, of course, you need more stimulus. So if we're looking at aesthetically, changing body composition, this is where your bare minimum is four times a week. We also know that when you're lifting heavy you women specifically, there's a signal to really mobilise belly fat. So this is really important for women who are in physique building or looking for aesthetics for like summer or whatever it is, to really hit that four times a week. Minimum. If we're looking for like, I have a lot of endurance athletes who want to get better, and they want to maintain strong strength for their sport, that two times a week is a bare minimum, or when they are actually in the race season. I don't want them to drop it because if you drop that strength training, it really does a disservice if you're trying to stay strong for your sport, because you start losing more lean mass and it takes longer to build it back. And in this time period, it is so incredibly difficult not only to build lean mass, but to keep it so if you're not stimulating to keep it and you lose it. It takes a significant amount of more work to put that that lean mass back on. So again, we can divide it up To what is your primary goal? Are you endurance focus that needs the strength to complement what you're doing that Behrman is to. If you're someone who is more gym oriented and lifting and physique oriented, then that bare minimum is for. Okay, interesting.

And what about when we're looking at recovery, and any kind of like D loading, but also around the menstrual cycles. So often what I'll do is sort of lesson things off towards the end of the cycle, in terms of the intensity, and that almost gives my body some recovery. And my understanding is that helps to support progesterone production. Should you remember saying a minimum of four times a week? How would you structure that if we look, I guess we should sort of need to look in. And then the two for the endurance athlete, if we're looking at three different sections of the population. So we're looking at women who are in their cycling years, they haven't yet hit perimenopause. And then we have a category of women who are maybe in early perimenopause, who are still cycling, but maybe they're having an ovulatory cycles. And they really want to optimise for that progesterone as much as they can. And then you've got women who now this they're experiencing significant disruption disruption, how would you bucket them in terms of that intensity?

So we're looking at someone who's naturally cycling, we know that it's the follicular phase that lengthens and shortens for the most part in in pre menopausal women in reproductive years. And you can leverage intensity in that low hormone state around ovulation. And about the five days after ovulation. This is where we start to do more steady state work, maybe we're upping the reps and dropping weight. But that five ish days before your period starts, we really say let's do, we want to look complete recovery, work technique under the bar, work on skills drills, and do everything to really support your body to absorb the hard training you've done before support progesterone production, or good sleep because we have a lot of sleep disruption in that high hormone phase. And then when you get into the low hormone phases of lead phase, again, you're ready to hit it hard. If we're looking at someone who is early perimenopause, and they're still having regular cycles following that same pattern is good. And we really want to emphasise that D load. It's the recovery between days that you might find you need a little bit more. Instead of there was a meme that came out I think it was today or said instead of asking why I feel so lazy, we need to ask ourselves why we need more rest. And when we hit perimenopause, there's this this myth that women are always so busy and they're like in a rushing women syndrome where they're highly stressed, they're tired, but wired. And yet, they're using exercise to de stress, but they're not taking enough rest. So they're always fighting and they're always tired. And I find this in the early perimenopause years because people aren't quite aware that they're in perimenopause. So they're tired, they're wired, they're busy, and they're still trying to do all the training and they're not quite hitting the mark, and they're not getting the adaptations. So it's looking and saying, Okay, well, we need to back down around ovulation, we need to really focus in on that recovery. As we're starting to have immune system changes, the more proinflammatory we're starting to make having an offset or recycle. So we have less oestrogen production as well. And we have the I have more recovery between days and then that last week, or five days before the period is due to come is really recover D load absorb it. And when we get into late perimenopause, where the cycles are really irregular, where you might have one that's a normal 28 day, then all of a sudden, it's 40 or 50 days, and you're like I don't know, when my periods going to come, we tend to shift it to having two week focus one week D load, but the D load isn't completely off in recovery. We look at it as really super easy doing what you want to do. And if you're training for an endurance or you're training specifically for like a physique build and you're trying to lose a little bit of body fat, then we can look at doing a super, super easy longer cardio session a couple of times during that D load week. So people are like, I can't take a full week off. I'm in the habit. It's how I get my my stress relief to keep the same days of activity, but we just moderate what you're doing on those days. Instead of your bootcamp or your high intensity or your heavy lifting on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We're doing technique work on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Tuesday, Thursday, instead of going for your interval run or or maybe a road ride or maybe you're trying a new kickboxing class, you're just really dropping it way down to that 50% mark. So you're still having movement and activity, but it's a recovery focus instead of Okay, I'm gonna hit it hard and then have another dealer week. So we try to go that that two week on one week off, because then that sets us up for when we hit that actual post menopause state where we do have a complete changeover and our recovery metrics, and the way that our body does recover. And we know that you can handle up to two weeks of really focused block training, and then you need that week to really recover.

I suppose menopause you do you need a week, every two weeks, basically. Yeah. So when she meets on one, okay, and you still can make with that level of intensity for two weeks, you can still make the body composition changes that you absolutely yeah, okay. Absolutely. Yeah. And actually, from what you're saying is reasonably as well, by doing because you're sort of describing quite a lot of functional training as well, right, you can do lateral moves, you can move in different directions, you're going to be supporting that connective tissue. And you're building a very strong call, which is going to help protect you against injury, because it's kind of the things that we neglect if we don't set aside time, right,

exactly. And, like looking at some of the newer research is coming out, they are looking at power based training and plyometric, or the kind of explosive movement in older women, so 78 years old. And they're finding that when they move away from that traditional three times a week, 10 to 12 reps of a particular exercise, and they put them in this focused, intense session of there, we're going to do some heavy lifting, and then we're going to do some plyometric work within reason, of course, because they're of their age. And they do that for two weeks focusing on one week off. And not only do they increase lean mass and change body composition in a positive way, it also improves their balance and coordination. So now the fear of falling and you know, they step off a curb wrong, or they slip on a stair, they don't fall, because they have better balance and coordination. So for looking for the odd health as well, that functional movement, and the ability for proprioception becomes really important. And that's what we can work on as we're starting to get into this time where we need a little bit more recovery to keep adapting and getting performance gains.

Yeah, really important. And I guess one thing I'd like to clarify when we're talking about lifting heavy and we're talking sort of below six reps, and we're creating that stimulus, what are your views around this concept of one or two reps in reserve? Is that what you believe? Because I've seen some research that you don't need to go to failure, and actually having that one to two reps in reserve will help you build muscle mass and just the same way without really predisposing you to injury. I'm curious what your thoughts are there.

Yeah, I know, I've heard that too. And then I've also pulled from the site. If we tell women to have that one or two rep reserve, unfortunately, our brains will not allow us to go as heavy. So it's a psychological, I guess, challenge for women to really put themselves in the hurt box. So there is that fine line. And this is why when I tell people when I want them to start lifting heavier, we talk about heavy lifting, it could take three or four months to get to that loads that you want to lift. Because for me, if you can't move, well, I don't want to put you under load. So I want you to spend time learning technique really mobilising, hitting to have really good mechanics, that couldn't be just with the bar. And then you slowly start building weight on that bar, as your mechanics are improving so that you get that weight with the proper mechanics. So that reduces injury risk. Because I've had women go, I can't go do heavy lifting. I don't know how to do a deadlift, like I don't want you to, I want you to take this time. Let's see how you move. Let's see how you hinge. Let's really work on the basics. And then we are adding that in with mobility work. They're improving their mechanics, they're improving their body composition, they're getting a lot of the proprioception that firing patterns that we want so that when we add that load in, it's like they've been lifting for a

really long time. So I often get asked if there was one supplement and I had to narrow it down to one supplement that I would take, what would that be, and it would be athletic greens. Why? Because it contains pretty much everything you need. It has adaptogens in it. It has really costi B vitamins and other vitamins and minerals. It has mushrooms. It has prebiotics, probiotics, and it also tastes incredibly good. And so I tend to have it first thing in the morning or add it into my morning smoothie is super easy to blend up. And it's just so lovely and like skin clearing energy boosting, helps with gut health. It's just magical. So it's the one thing that I take absolutely every single day and the cool thing is you can get a year's free supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs are from my friends over at one. All you need to do is head over to athletic greens.com forward slash Angela foster that's athletic greens.com forward slash Angela Foster, let's get back to the show. Interesting. And I think you made a point earlier actually around the the more you're the more you're training, the more you've got to add it right. And I remember having this conversation with Mike Matthews earlier in the year. And he was talking about how different it is for somebody who regularly goes and how much harder, they're actually gonna have to work. One question that I kind of have in my mind is, what about, you know, spinal strength disc quality. I was told, for example, I had poor disc quality, and I had a couple of prolapses. You know, the moment I've been working on like deadlifts, and squats and things and getting to say, 120% of my body weight, but it comes, it starts to concern me as to how much do you encourage people to keep going or to, obviously, the techniques important, but sometimes I find that tempo actually can be as good a way of providing that resistance, because you can always add less weight. But as soon as you slow things down, and you keep that muscle under tension, you're getting a significant trigger. Or you can use machines with cables and things that keep the muscle under tension longer. What are your thoughts there?

Yeah, I like personally, I will never do a one or two rep max. Because I know I'd set myself up for injury being competitive. So I'm like, I'm not going to do one or two. So if I'm lifting heavy, I'm always sets of three to five. Because if I aim for that set of one, I know I'm gonna walk out with some kind of back tweak. So when I'm looking at time under tension, I'll do a lot of the initially I'll start with lighter weight to a dead stop if I'm doing deadlifts. But if not, then I'll use some the rebound, I will do touching, go touch and go touching go just to be able to maintain any sort of an attempt to use that heavier weight. I also have am on the advisory board for a channel and they're doing a lot of work with cables and E centric loading. And I complement a lot of my heavy lifting with that, and encourage people to do so because it works the muscle in different way. And it still gets that myosin, actin and neuro muscular connection, which is what we're after. The idea behind lifting heavy isn't about the pure strength aspect of it. But it's about that neuromuscular connection to keep the myosin integrity so that we don't lose that mass.

Okay, and it is actually it's very taxing, taxing on the neuromuscular system, isn't it? I mean, you fatigue because it's taking a lot of coordination and the brain.

And that's why you see people sitting down on the bench waiting for like three to five minutes between, which is absolutely what you should do, just so your central nervous system can have that break and get out of that fatigue state before you go do any work left.

Yeah, so really good points. I think people often nervous, right, and they think they're lazy. But then actually, you realise how much more you can lift when you do take that proper rest.

And you'll see it too. It's like the culture of the gyms, you'll see a lot of the guys who are into heavy lifting, or you know, powerlifting, and they're in the gym, and they don't do very much work, per se, although they actually are. And then you'll see women are like, Oh, I'm going to superset with this. And I'm going to do setups between that. And they're getting more of a cardiovascular workout instead of a true neuromuscular stimulus. So trying to educate women that when you're going to lift heavy, you do want that sit down and rest time period. It's not a cardiovascular workout. It's all about the neuromuscular system. Be like one of those guys who has the mirror muscles, who does like a couple of lat pull downs or push press and then sit down for five minutes. That's what we want to emulate.

So true, it feels lazy, but it's right, it's it gets the best results. And what about the kind of ancillary moves so like with the compound lifts, you're lifting heavy? Let's say you want to work your arms a bit more things like that, would you go higher reps on those or do you still encourage them to lift heavy low repetition on omit

I, I like to do a heavy session and encourage people to do heavy session and then at the end, do a little bit of a if they're really looking to work biceps or triceps. And then it's a lighter load with higher reps, because you've gotten what we want out of that heavy lifting session. And if you're doing compound movements, you're using the core you're using tries using buys you use lats, so it's just kind of like the top off. But I don't encourage them to go in and be like today I'm just doing the ancillary work where I'm playing light load and and high wrecks.

Because you could have voiced a tie. Yeah, it might feel good as you say, particularly when you're going from one exercise to the other. It's not doing that much sprint interval training. I know that if you knew what I'd done this morning. Now I think I'd be told off I've actually been measuring this with Blum. And if I did this now I reckon it's gonna say I'm planning carbs. Because I think this is I want to talk to you about sprint interval training, but also fueling because this is the bit that I think busy women really struggle with. So I'll use myself As an example this morning, so I woke up and meditated. I've come like a drink addicted to brain tap. So I was doing a brain tap session. So good morning and night sends me into the deepest sleep. And I woke up about five and I did that, then I was kind of, I'd read your book and I was kind of thumbing through thinking, what are the really like key points want to make sure I ask you. And then I've got I've kind of run out of time I normally work out first, so I'll just go and do some sprint training. And I've not eaten had nothing but I can feel my tummy rumbling. And I know that if I went can see it Stacy's face. I imagined when I've tracked this on lumen, what it shows me is everything you say, and the research is that I know I woke up burning fat because I measured it. And likelihood is now if I breathe into this, it will say I'm burning carbs, because my body is now under stress. And this was not deliberate. This is accidental, okay, because I've just managed my time for me. Before we go to sprint training, it's a separate thing. Can you talk a little bit about fueling on why it's important to prefer to not put ourselves under stress?

Yeah, so almost everything that we know about like the glucose carbohydrate burning, and then slowly getting the fat burning and doing fasted training to change your metabolic profile for exercise is based on male data. When you look at women's bodies and women's physiology, we clear blood sugar quickly. And that's our primary when we start exercising. And then we'll tap into just a little bit of muscle glycogen, and then a lot of fat, fat use or beta oxidation. So we need to fuel because we need to maintain our blood glucose. If we don't maintain our blood glucose, then what happens is we tap into a little bit of muscle glycogen so that we can get into beta oxidation. But the body's like, wait, I need to save that because I don't know when I'm going to get food. And our bodies are really responsive to food availability. So for men, not a lot of food means they lean up, and they don't have a genetic change to increase stores. But for women when we exercise without fuel, and we don't have carbohydrate on board as fuel, when we start exercising, we have gene adaptation in our liver that up regulates let's store everything and Burnley bass. So one off session. Yeah, it's okay. I'll forgive you. We all do. But if we're really looking to maintain our lean mass, and prevent our bodies from getting signalling distorted body fat, we have to do stuff that doesn't mean a big meal. And it can be like I'm infamous for talking about my routine cold brew in the morning, where it's protein powder, unsweetened almond milk, two shots of espresso made the night before. So I had that before I do something. And you would

have actually had that. So actually, in this morning's example, because it's a good working example, right? I'm in a quiet catabolic state now. So in theory, I'm undoing the gym work and things and the strength training that I've done the last few days in the gym. So the think the answer would have been instead of the black coffee, I could have mixed that up with it. What was it a little bit of protein powder, some unsweetened almond milk, and he got up so you would have just had the most you could just go with my sets, then presumably?

Yeah, it actually depends on what you're doing. Like if you're gonna go do some gym work with resistance training, we know that women should have some protein instead of carbohydrate to go around 90 calories of protein. So what is that? 20 grammes of protein, and that helps bring our resting metabolic rate up after exercise, resistance training. If we're going to do cardio that we want to put a little bit of carbon there, my protein powder has a little bit of carbon. Primarily because I love maple sugar. And the only time I can have it is when I put it with my protein powder. So I put maple sugar in with my protein powder and coffee. So yes, this there's a little bit of car but it's primarily amino acid based. So yeah, if you were to put protein powder in your black coffee would have been good to go.

So so just to clarify that. So if I was weight training, I would have the protein powder with the black coffee, but actually doing what I was doing today, which was just sprint very quick, short, sharp. I should have had a little bit of carbs as well. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because we're doing that kind of anaerobic training. Yes, yes. Okay, interesting. So if we come back a little bit to nutrition because we stick with them. So the sprint interval training that I was doing this morning, this is really important. And I think you talk a lot about this in the book, we need to provide us another way of providing a strong similar stimulus. And a lot of the research I've seen and I think you talk about this as well in here in the book is about how that helps your mitochondria. Yes, there's also so Okay, so just let's step back a little bit to clarify for people they might be wondering what Hello sprint interval training, can you just describe what the things

we do? Yes, a sprint interval training falls under the umbrella of high intensity interval training. But both of them are different sprint interval training is like full gas for 20 to 30 seconds with maybe 90 to 120 seconds every. So you're going as hard as you can for 20 to 30 seconds on a full recovery. So they can go as hard as you can. Again, if we're looking at high intensity interval training, the interval is longer, it's not as high intense. So if we're looking at a rating of perceived exertion, you're doing sprint interval training, you're sitting at a nine or 10. For those 20 to 30 seconds, we're talking about high intensity interval training where your intervals are a little bit longer than you're sitting around and seven or eight, there's just slightly less than two. But they're still short. But with Sprint interval training, we can't do very much of it and balsa wall as hard as you can go for those intervals. And then as fast as you can recover, recover, but you want to make sure that you've recovered enough that when it's time to do the next interval, you can go as hard as you can, again, it's not about, you know, I'm bringing my heart rate down to 140. And then I'm going to bring it up to one ad, it's about the recovery, like, how are you recovering from a cardiovascular and a neuromuscular standpoint, so that you can go really fast, really hard again, and it might be that you can only do three when you first start, and then you can build up to five to eight sets. But it's about being short, sharp, very efficient.

Okay. So you could increase that recovery as you were going through, could you so for example, I was doing exactly that about 25 seconds, and then recovering for about 60 seconds, but I noticed as I was going through the number of Sprint's I was needing slightly longer recovery to be able to get back up to the speed. So that's fine. You can play that. That's fine. Okay, so how many times a week do we need to be doing this? And is this something that we need to avoid in the luteal phase.

So in the luteal phase, it is something you want to avoid, because it's so high intense, and it's such a strong stress to the body. That said, if you're suffering from really bad PMS, and you're like, I can't get out of bed because I have lots of bloating and I just awful, or you've gone through from luteal, excuse me luteal to the bleed phase, and you're having a lot of cramping. And getting out and doing a couple of short, sharp high intensity 22nd intervals is magic, because you're not doing somebody that's overly taxing if you're only doing three or four of them. And it increases a growth hormone and anti inflammatory response. So there is a time and a place to do it. It's just not making it a regular habit. luteal phase. If we're looking at it from a perimenopause standpoint, and we want to garner that higher metabolic stress, then we want to try to do that three times.

Three times a week. Okay, so if you were gonna do that, and people are short on time, can they chuck this on to the end of their strength

session? Absolutely. Absolutely. So we look at you know, your strength session might be 30 minutes. And then at the end of that 30 minutes of maybe doing a lot of posterior chain work, you jump on the treadmill, and you're doing five rounds of 20 seconds on and a minute and a half off. And you're teaching your body how to go really fast, really hard on somewhat tired legs, which improves that neuromuscular connection is perfect.

And what about just steady state kind of zone two style training? There's a lot of talk about this at the moment. And I know, Peter Thiel has been talking about it a lot on his podcast, and that this is really good for mitochondrial health as well. What are your thoughts on this? Quite, quite a few people have asked me this question, please ask Stacy about zone two trails.

I, it pushes women into that grey zone into that moderate intensity zone, not necessarily because they want to be there. But just by the nature of trying to keep it moderately easy. They end up being in that grace app where it's too hard to be easy to really Garner mitochondrial adaptations and things that you want. And it's too easy to be hard to really get the adaptations you want the body composition change. But what it does do is it increases cortisol, and this is something we don't want because we have so so if we're looking at polarising our training, which is what we want to do, we want to make sure that we have that very top ended. And then you're looking at that zone one, like I make people wear a heartrate monitor to make sure they stay low enough, because if they're going on a rating of perceived exertion, they often end up too high and they're not getting the benefits of being purely aerobic.

Could you measure this because something I've been playing with that I really enjoy it thanks been to a very parasympathetic state, I come back very, very relaxed is when I just decided I'm going to go out and I'm going to go for a very like you say, embarrassingly slow jog. And I have to I can only do it so long as I can maintain 100% nasal breathing. So in and out through your nose, it's very relaxing afterwards.

Yes. And you have to, you have to actually train yourself to do that. Because initially, people are like, I can't breathe, and they get really anxious. So practising nasal breathing at rest first, and then when you go out to do a really embarrassingly slow run, yes, it does. It does invoke that parasympathetic response. And you're like, Wow, I feel like I've just come back from a heavy lift session, but I'm not sore.

Yeah, yeah. It's really weird. And I'm not hyper, which is like, for me is obsessed with doing things all the time. I never thought I'd like it. And I'm like, like, all kinds of zen mode. Yeah. Yeah. Like kids like me with broken off to one of those.

Yeah, I know, tell my husband about it. Because he would want me to do it all the time. Well,

that's fine. And you can do that for as long as you like, presumably, what as long as you can maintain it right over time, it gets harder, okay. And that's any time of the month presumably.

Exactly. Okay. It's always good to try to try to invoke that parasympathetic. And that relax, because, especially when we're in our early to mid 40s, we always end up in the sympathetic drive. Just because we have so much going on, we have hormone flux changes, and we have more of an instigation for parasympathetic, or baseline cortisol is coming up, we don't have as much progesterone that is going to be more of the calming aspect. So anything that we can do to really get that parasympathetic going, and that calm and relaxed. And that Zen feeling is something that you should be focusing

on as the night draw and and it's getting darker in the evenings here in the UK. And the mornings are much less bright, it's seems that we are just turning on our lights more and more, and that can really disrupt our sleep. But the best way to avoid this as possible, obviously, to dim the lights in the evening, and but also to pop on a pair of blue light blocking glasses. Now not all blue light blocking glasses block enough blue light, but the ones by red light rising do and they are my favourite, I tend to put a yellow lens pair on in the afternoon. And then as I transition into the evening, I put on the red lens, which blocks 100% of blue light and just sets me up for a fantastic night's sleep every night. In fact, it's not just me, all members of my household, my kids included, wear these blue light blocking lenses, and you can get yourself a core 10% off their lens work by heading over to Angela foster.me, forward slash blue blockers. That's Angela foster.me, forward slash blue blockers and entering code Angela at checkout. And if you're thinking about getting a red light, you can also get the same discount of any of their red light therapy devices as well. That's Angela foster.me, forward slash blue blockers. Now let's get back to the show. And then fasting, which I know is a controversial topic. It's really interesting because I was I was interviewing Dr. Joseph auntie and I think who is the CEO of prologue. And what he was saying, just really dovetails with what you say, because he was like, well, they obviously are all about molecular Paston right at that company. And the research is really good that they've done. But he's like, there's no point you're not stimulating autophagy by fasting for 16 hours. So there really isn't a point to doing it. And depending on how overweight you are, it could take what they found is and the reason they made it a five day molecular fast was you may only get one day where you're really stimulating overall autophagy. So it seems like you're really not doing a big myth because everyone is obsessed with it. And it's funny because even though I know all of this, the more you're surrounded by on social media, the more you kind of get competitive with it and think Oh, yep, I've been boasting this long, even though, you know, isn't really doing that. And exercise is stimulating autophagy anyway, but can we drag this off for people? Because

yeah, for sure. No, I just wrote an article on intermittent fasting versus time restriction today for for magazine. So it's all fresh in my head. Cool. So first of all, when we're talking about fasting, you have intermittent fasting and you have time restricted eating. So time restricted eating is what first came out. When they're looking in the 40s. Around the war, we need to have some calorie restriction and they're like, Okay, well, let's really just make an effort to educate people not to eat after dinner, and then they can have breakfast, and then we'll have a slight calorie restriction during the day. But time restricted eating really is eating according to our circadian rhythm. So we wake up we need food, our brain sees light, it's time to eat or body can handle it. And then it's starting to get dark. We don't eat when it's dark. That's time restricted eating. We talked about intermittent fasting which also often gets in the way terminology gets intermixed. Intermittent Fasting is what all the buzz is where we're having like the warrior, where you have a four hour eating window, a 12 hour eating window, or an eight hour eating window or alternate day fasting. And this is where it gets really confusing. Because intermittent fasting is interesting because you either have with calorie restriction in your eating window, or you eat whatever you want within that eating window. And when we're looking at the research that's been done on people, it's primarily obese, overweight women, sedentary women or obese, overweight, clinically sick men, that then that's been generalised into general population. And the primary aspect of intermittent fasting is weight loss. Then they're like, Oh, well, we'll see these other kinds of, of, you know, health benefits of toffee G and increase oxidative capacity within the muscle that are cardiovascular output, all of these kinds of things. But when it comes right down to it, it's calorie restriction. So there's a really good meta analysis that came out. And another clinical study that just came out maybe three weeks ago, comparing the two. And people are doing slight calorie restriction in it with better weight loss and better cardiovascular outcomes and better endocrine health than people who are doing all this crazy intermittent fasting time restricted windows, we look right down to the data as well, we're looking at men versus women. All the stuff that you hear about with intermittent fasting with the toffee, G and parasympathetic drive, and blood glucose control, and better insulin control is all male data. Because when you look at women, it's not there, there isn't anything to support it. For women, we see the complete opposite, we see a downregulation on a genetic level. So we're looking at gene adaptations to food restriction. For men, we see a five time increase in gene responses to preserve the mass and to preserve testosterone. But for women, we see not only no upregulation of genes to preserve fertility, we see a change to stop fertility, we see a downregulation of thyroid, we see a downregulation of luteinizing pulse, we see a blunting of kisspeptin, which is responsible for appetite and appetite control. And we see in women instead of blood glucose control and better insulin sensitivity, the opposite. So when we're talking about all this intermittent fasting stuff that's being put out there, a toffee TV comes the one at the very bottom, because people don't really want to talk about that, because it's not there for either sex unless you really start getting into the long ration stuff.

But when you start looking at exercise and exercise data, you start exercising, and it's a huge stimulus to create toffee G in the brain and the cardiovascular system. We also know that exercise promotes the aerobic exercise promotes the growth of brain tissue, and resistance training increases the growth of the nerve growth factor with. So exercise in itself has more robust data to support longevity, and support all the things that the buzzwords of intermittent fasting support. But the evidence is there. And the adherence to exercise with slight calorie restriction is so much better. And the outcomes are better than someone who's trying to do all these crazy hours of time restriction. Because the hunger really baits up people and the idea of I just I can't do anything until noon. Because I have, I can't bring my best time in. And then if we're trying to fit our training, and it's in that facet window, like we've talked about earlier, it's really devastating to women regardless of age, because our bodies revert to using lean mass first, instead of using carbohydrate and fat.

Interesting, I'll just say, and so I guess, for women that are exercising that autophagy that stimulated through exercise, is that regardless of whether they go and do the workout in a fasted state, because I know we've just been talking about pre fueling workouts in different ways. Is there any benefit to actually going and because I've heard people talk about stimulating more NAD and the salvage pathway and things like that if you go and exercise in a fasted state, is there any benefit men in men and women and women Hey,

no, because from like a pure biological standpoint, when it comes down to our environment and food availability, biologically the male is completely different than the female by logically, food in accessibility, and low nutrient density increases the fertility aspect of the male species. Because the whole thing is, if there isn't any food, I'm going to die off soon. So I need to be able to reproduce to keep the species going. But not only that, because there's lack of food and lack of food availability. We know that in the female aspect of species from biological standpoint, that there's a downturn of fertility. So the the male species has to increase fertility to be able to impregnate a sub fertile female aspect for survival of the species. So it all comes down to that biological aspect. See, it's interesting.

Yeah, very interesting.

Bodies are completely different.

Completely different. And is that true, though? What about when women have transitioned through menopause? What about? Is there any benefits to fasted exercise that?

So this is where we started looking at the very sparse research that's out there. So you'll have physicians who are like, yes, you should do fasted training to lose that body fat. And yes, you should do a ketogenic diet because it helps with the abdominal adiposity. But when we look again, back down to the molecular mechanisms, women are already maximally fatty acid adapted for burning fat during exercise. There's no reason to do fasted exercise or the ketogenic diet, because again, it's a stress on the body that increases cortisol and women who are postmenopausal already have a higher level baseline. And we also have a greater or women also have a greater systemic inflammation, especially the early menopausal years that postmenopausal year so about the first five to six years after that one point time menopause, the body is still undergoing this transition. So if you start adding in the fasted training increases the stress and it backfires. So then you have an increased signalling, for putting on more body fat, because the body's like, Hey, wait, I'm going through all this craziness, I don't have these hormones are trying to reset and relearn. And I know that I have increased protein for fatty acid use in my mitochondria. So why are you trying to do this to me, so it in the small amount of research that is out there on postmenopausal women and exercise fasting is not recommended.

Interesting, because this this is actually difficult, right? When you're looking at the busyness because I'm just thinking and I think probably listeners are thinking about this. So at the moment, you know, my kids are on. They're on holiday, they're at home, so I can kind of do things whenever I want to in the morning, as long as they're entertained at some point during the day. It's all good. Whereas in a few weeks time when we go back to school runs for me, I will definitely and I like to do this anyway. Because I like to move first get up workout in a fasted state and then hope that I will I will be now after listening to you. Make sure I refuel before that school run because otherwise I'm inadvertently going quite a long time. From what you're seeing almost sounds like doing some gems because I can't just come and sit and work out of bed right? I get terrible backache it's horrible, isn't it? So it's but it sounds like you're almost saying maybe like you know, walk your dog for a toilet break or do some flexibility. But actually postponing, eating and postponing the workout was post school run is going to be better in terms of the results that you're going to see and keeping the body less stressed.

Yes, in the short, like, you're living my life, we're living the same life. Right? Yeah. So it's like it is it's totally jumped. I get up first thing. And I'm like secretly, quietly walking down the stairs. So don't want my daughter to wake up. Because as soon as she wakes up, boom, it's all on. So I want to get up early, have my quiet time do stretching, do a workout. And then then I can do when she wakes up and we have breakfast, school, run all that kind of stuff. So I get up and I have that that protein coffee in there. And that's what gets me through, right, yeah, because I can't eat. I'm not hungry until 10 or 11 in the morning, but I know that I need food in order to get what I want out of my short workout. Otherwise, I'm like, I should have stayed in bed. Because if I'm going to get up and try to do intervals, and I'm running on cortisol from being asleep, and I don't have any fuel, then I'm not going to hit the intensities. I want to get any kind of adaptations, I'm going to increase my already elevated cortisol, and I'm going to be tired all day. But just that little bit of extra before I go do any kind of workout. It just makes a complete difference. It gives you it drops the cortisol, it allows you to hit the intensities that you want for that high intensity work or the lifts that you want, at the load that you want because you have a little bit of fuel. And your hypothalamus is going Hey, okay, great. There is some fuel and I know that I can do this and I'm gonna adapt to this even though it's not a lot. It's some and it's giving the body the signal that there's some food available. And then you recover post-exercise with maybe a half of breakfast because you don't have time to eat the whole thing. Or you're having a little puddle of yoghurt or something like that just to get a little bit of nutrition in to help facilitate the repair, stop that breakdown state and signal to the hypothalamus that yes, there's food available. So small management within that whole tight time range. But if you're someone who's like, yeah, I really want to, I can't eat, I just absolutely can't eat steak in the morning, then you want to really take an eye of what kind of training you're doing. Because if you're trying to do any kind of high intensity work or heavy lifting, and you don't have fuel onboard, then it causes this quagmire of, of increased cortisol, you're not going to get a growth hormone boost after exercise, you're getting signalling for more inflammation. And then if you're not eating after exercise, that just compounds the fact because you stay in this breakdown state. So just that small amount might be 100 calories of a little bit of protein and carbohydrate before you go. It makes a world of difference both from what you can do in the moment for exercise, but also long term for body composition and health.

Would you still do that? If you were doing one of those kind of parasympathetic base ramps where you're kind of nasally breathing? Or if that were you're just burning fat? Would you do that in a fat burning state?

Yeah, no, I wouldn't do anything fasted, because a whole lot faster. Interesting. Okay, well, because the whole idea of fat burning is a myth from the 80s as well, because if we look at the way the body works, you have to use carbohydrate before you can get into fat burning. And if you don't have enough carbohydrate on board to get into fat burning, the first thing that comes up is cortisol. So if we're trying to do the parasympathetic, and we're trying to instigate more of that parasympathetic drive, you need people on board, or it's kind of a moot point, you have more epinephrine, you have more cortisol that comes up, and you end up in that sympathetic drive.

Interesting, because some people wake up, they'll use something like the device's Loulan. And they say, I'm waking up and and burning carbs. So therefore, I need to fast for longer. But it sounds from what you're saying it over time, their metabolism is going to become eminently more flexible, because it's going to be less stressed if they're feeling because I think yes, that concept, isn't it? I must do more because now it's not working. Actually, it's it's flipping it on its head. Yes. And post workout, then the post workout nutrition. You mentioned there, you can just have something small. If you're in a rush, what's key there? Is it protein and carbs again?

Yes, yes. For women, especially as we get older, we need more protein, protein becomes paramount. Because again, we're getting more and more anabolic ly resistant. But we want to make sure that we're getting protein and some carbohydrate in relatively quickly because our bodies come back down to baseline for the most part within around 90 minutes, where men can have three to 18 hours. So you really want to make sure that you're getting that nutrition in. So when I hear things about, oh, there isn't a timing window anymore. Well, there isn't a timing window really for men because it's so wide. But for women, it's tight, because their metabolism is coming back down. And if we don't get that nutrition signalling to the hypothalamus, then we start getting that downregulation of Peptan neurons. If we get that then we endocrine dysfunction, thyroid dysfunction, and it only takes four days of doing the no fueling after exercise to start having thyroid dysfunction. The brains like we need to start conserving. And like I said, like you start getting changes within the liver to turn on all the signals for absorbing and storing instead of using. So it's really important that women remember to eat and you're

doing Yeah, I'm feeling do you need to hit like Gabriele Lyons talks about make sure you get at least 30 grammes to refer to trigger muscle protein synthesis with that kind of three to four grammes of leucine. Yes,

yeah. When you get into late Peri menopause and post menopause, it's closer to 40.

Okay, close. Yeah, she I remember she always says between 30 and 50, close to close to 40 for late perimenopause. Okay. And for those of you listening, actually, so I won't go into the detail here in your book, you actually break down how much you should have. It's super helpful. There's a table in there talking about if you're doing a recovery day, if your strength training, what you're having and how you apportion those macronutrients, those protein, fats and carbs. So listeners, you can go and look at that because I found that a really, really helpful thing in the book really good. Okay, and so then with the the other thing I wanted to chat to you about that I think was really interesting there was around the vagus nerve. And we're all tracking you know, using like things like whoop and or rings and having a look at our heart rate variability. And you make really interesting point around how these wearables are not really picking up what's happening. with female hormones and the way that progesterone seems to be calming for the brain, but has a different impact on the vagus nerve. This was super interesting to me.

Yes. So when we look at all the wearable tech, it's not fintech. This is why there's this huge uproar. And let's do is all the algorithms were written by men and a male environment and then given to women. But what happens with progesterone coming up, is it stimulates more of a sympathetic drive. So it changes. There are changes in the autonomic nervous system. So we now have an increase in our resting heart rate, we have an increase in our respiratory rate. We have changes in our sleep architecture, so that we can't get into a lot of slow wave sleep, which we need. So when we're looking at using wearables, especially something like whooping ora, where they're giving you codes of if you're recovered or not. They're comparing luteal to luteal. They're comparing follicular to luteal. So there's, if you're looking at something like whoop, it's really really difficult to get into the green in the luteal phase because it's comparing day on to day on today on which starts with primarily follicular because that's where you have your best recovery. If it was to be like, Okay, we're tracking the toggled menstrual cycle status on, let's count forward 14 or 15 days, and let's see if ovulation is there. And then we're gonna compare the last half the cycle to the previous left cycle, and we're going to compare follicular phase to follicular phase that would be better for really using and being able to interpret what's happening with variables, then when you hit post menopause is complete change again, because your heart rate variability completely plummets, because now you don't have hormones interfering with the autonomic nervous system. Now you have a different set of parameters that you have to work with yet again, because I have women who were in late, perimenopause, they're like I'm never recovered. What's going on my heart rate variability is always so low. Oh, it's because we need to look at the new trend. We have to watch the trends, not the day to day input that these variables are giving us.

Okay, and that's why it's important never to compare with someone else. Right. You're looking at what you're strangling. Yeah, I've noticed actually on the aura is that my resting heart rate is elevated slightly in the luteal phase. And as you see, my HRV seems less but I haven't ever gone back. I guess I should do that and compare, like, what is it luteal phase to luteal phase to see really how well I'm recovered and be nice if we had a device that could help us this, wouldn't it? It would be really, really helpful. And creatine was last question. You talk about that being really, really good for women. There's obviously neurological benefits as much as anything else. Do you chuck that in? And I'm just curious in that pre workout drink that you have.

Yeah, my secret concoction is medicinal mushrooms. Shaundra creatine, protein, double espresso, almond milk, maple syrup, maple sugar, maple sugar.

And which mushrooms are using like quadriceps to feel the work?

No, I'm using lion's mane. Okay. Because lion's mane is really good for brain right now. Yeah. And just have had a history of few concussions and a lot of the research that we're doing with concussion and and long term of concussion. I'm like, I need to do heavy resistance training and use lion's mane. Yeah,

for sure. Oh, interesting. Because I was hearing about how some athletes were banned use after use it not banned. They Yeah, their results were not allowed after using quadriceps because it had such big results in terms of blood flow, as well.

Yeah. Yeah. It does. I think quadriceps and I think it's Rishi as well can alter testosterone. So they are not recommended for professional athletes to use because he can come up as a positive dope test. Yes.

Yeah, really interesting. So I have some specific questions, if that's all right, before we close, short, rapid fire ones, you've been so generous with your time, but there's very interesting ones, we may have covered some of them. So one of the question was, we've covered this one, actually, how long before or after training? Is it optimal to eat for a good body composition? So the pre fueling that you're doing? How long before? The Workout? Is that? Is that like, sort of 20 minutes? Or how close to working out the caffeine?

Yeah, no, no, like most people are getting up and trying to fuel right before they workout. So it's not going to be like a 90 minute thing, but 20 minutes is fine. Some people are like drinking or eating in the cars or driving to the gym. So as long as you have something in and it's not heavy, heavy and fat, then it's going to probably not having fibre too. He's gonna get out and, and be useful by the time you get to your workout.

Awesome. Thank you. And then afterwards is within 30 minutes from what you were saying. Yeah, yeah. Okay, brilliant. I've read both your books on your course. I'd be interested, we talked a little bit about this on zone two training for those following your recommendations on strength hit and playa. And what Peter of tear was saying. But we've talked about this, this is a stress on the body. I guess one thing I want to clarify there then so people understand the differences. When it what heart rate? Are we kind of getting up to where we feel we're moving into that grey area where it's causing too much stress? So if we want to make it more zone, one more parasympathetic, how can people adjust that and understand whether they're working within the right zone?

Yeah, so you don't want to go above 55% of your max heart rate.

Okay. And you use the general kind of 220 minus your age as a kind of crude representation of it, or what would you

have for people starting, but a lot of people are using their wearables, and they can see where they spike out. Like, I have quite a few people who are in their mid 40s. But their max heart rate is in like 195 to 20 minus your age wouldn't really work. So yeah, it's good for baseline, but it's better to try to like, figure it out through real objective data, if

you can. So yeah, so if you're training regularly, and you have data where you can see your heart rate reaches a maximum, you're looking at about 55% of that. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting what you say, because with the nasal breathing, I found that mine can go above 140. And I'm still breathing nasally. Whereas that's very individual. Right? Perfect.

Absolutely.

And then, what about what's your take on walking? You don't mention it that much. But I think this is from someone who does, again, has done your books, provide your books and your courses, lifts a lot of heavy shit. She does sprint training, but she walks about 20,000 steps a day. Is this sort of counting towards all her? Does it complement it? Is she doing too much? Too little? What are your thoughts?

Is it purposeful walking, like out trying to maintain a heartrate walking? Or is it the 20,000 steps because she is a shift worker nurse in her

she does. She she does about 10,000 steps in a in a block. So that's purposeful, and then the rest is picked up through movement. So about half and half.

As long as it's like if she's doing that 10,000 Block purposeful and she knows why she's doing it is she doing it to have really polarise like recovery. And that's your easy, slow stuff, then sweet, keep it low, keep it easy. But if she's doing it, and she's trying to power walk and power, walk up hills, really making sure that she stays out of that moderate intensity is that which is hard when you're walking. So it's really having a purpose for what is that just like if you're rowing or running or riding or whatever it is, whatever your main sport is, you have to have a purpose for it and understand what you're doing when you go out.

Okay, brilliant, thank you. And then I'm a 51 year old endurance athlete, I'm soaking up all status advice, is it better to lift before or after a run, I'm never sure when to schedule the lifting, and especially on a double run day. That sounds

like hard, don't do lifting on a double run day. And I know, for people who are endurance athletes, they have a really hard time like mentally shifting out of like Wednesday, or dropping the volume. So it's ideal to lift heavy first and then do some interval stuff on the treadmill after instead of a long, slow distance run. So the way that we look at it is if you are running to ultra running or you're running for marathon, you want to do high intensity, like quality work in the week. And then you can do one long, slow step on the weekend. And then when you're having your two weeks on one week off, this is where in that one week off, you're putting in another really long, slow, easy, easy walk run. But when we're trying to maximise strength, as well as that endurance for running in particular, it's better to lift first and then do some technique sprint work afterwards. Because again, you're going to take that lifting fatigue and put it into your running form, which then feeds forward to getting the strong and the back half of the run that you're trying to do to more efficient.

There's a bit of a misconception isn't it that you have to do endless amounts of endurance. I remember when speaking to Ben Greenfield and albeit a man about how he trained for triathlon, it was so different to how most people trained and he was doing a lot of interval work and kind of veer to max train, to feel all that interest which just was massively timesaving.

It's huge and there's still that misconception that If you're gonna do endurance, you have to put many hours on the feet, like marathon training, you have to go and do your 20 miler before you're ready to do your marathon. And it's not. It's not like the science is ahead of the coaching. Let's put it that way. Because when you look at the science, it's not the optimal way to be able to go along, do you end up falling into a pace, it ends up being a bit too slow, you end up more injured, but you're doing high quality, strength and interval work, then that carries you forward without injury with strength to be able to do the long stuff

makes a lot of sense. And then the last one is on hydration. We talked about this a bit offline. Because this is a confusing area for a lot of people, water or just their electrolytes, if I'm running long between one and five hours in a hot climate, and set a 51. And my first response isn't so good these days.

Yes, because we get a change in our thirst response. And we have by biochemical changes that reduce our ability to feel thirsty. And then as soon as you put water on your tongue, it kills up their sensation. So if we're looking at staying hydrated in a hot environment, we want to look at something that's functionally hydrating. So what I mean by that is, when we're looking at where we have most of our fluid absorbed, it's from the small intestines. And the small intestines is very particular to the kinds of fluids and solids that come into it. So there's an amount of pressure that it can withstand. It's between 200 to 250 milliamp hours. Now for people who are like I'm not a physiologist, and understand that your blood sits around 280. And most sports drinks sit around 300. And if you're looking at plain water, it's maybe 10 Because it has some minerals and electrolytes in it. If we drink a sports drink that sits around 300, and it goes into the small intestines, and you're well above that 250 water has to come from other places in the body to dilute that sports drink before it can actually be absorbed. So you're causing an effective diuresis or effective dehydration. Then when you start adding salt tablets in and you're bringing salt tablets into that environment. Again, it's increasing the concentration and the pressure in the small intestine. So more water has to come in and diluted. If we're looking at using a drink that is around three to 4% So three to four grammes of carbohydrate per 100 No, with at the maximum 160 to 200 milligrammes of sodium per serving 500, no, that's functionally hydrogen. So that's going to work with your small intestines to be able to maximally absorb the fluid. So when we're looking at what do we need to stay hydrated, we need a solution that has a little bit of sugar, and a little bit of salt. That's it. You don't need magnesium, you don't need potassium. You don't need 1000 milligrammes of sodium, because none of those work with regards to fluid absorption. What's happened in sports science and in the sport nutrition marketing, is you have the big guns of Gatorade and Gatorade started off as a three to 4% solution with an artificial sweetener that got pulled by the FDA. So then they doubled the carbohydrate in it to maintain that that sweet palate and then said no, it's a way we we replace carbohydrates so you can keep going. It didn't get the messaging out about fluid absorption got lost. So then people started cramping and they started getting belly aches and like, oh, it's because they don't have enough sodium. So then salt tablets came in. But if you unpack it all and bring it right back down to the small intestines, where fluid absorption takes place, three to four grammes have primarily sucrose and glucose, because then those are the two sugars that are used readily for fluid absorption. And so it's three to four grammes per 100 mil and 160 milligrammes of sodium, up to 200 or 500 ml.

Wow. And actually, what I see is people taking like 1000, milligrammes, as you say, of sodium, mix with some potassium, like, you know, on a daily basis, a lot of people are like taking the kintone ampuls and saying I need, like, or totem sport, they're, like, so, so salty. So, take it out. I mean, particularly

forward to because then they're like, Oh, my salty sweater, it's like, well, if you didn't have such a high sodium intake, you wouldn't sweat out so much. Because if you have a high sodium diet, then you're gonna sweat more sodium. If you have a low sodium diet, you're gonna have more diluted sweat, your body can lose up to 50% of its sodium stores and still be fine during exercise. The problem comes when you're drinking plain water, which is what a lot of the waterlogging They drink to thirst and an exercise induced hyponatremia come into play, because people are drinking plain water, the salt has to come from places in the body to actually mix with that water to be absorbed. So this is where people started going, Oh, in salt tablets. So it's a miscommunication of what's happening from a physiological standpoint. And if you're having a lot of sodium from the sports products, and you're drinking them on a daily basis, then yes, you're going to have a higher amount of sodium stored, you're probably putting out a lot of sodium too, because you're all dosterone is going to come into play and be like, we don't need all of this. And you're gonna end up being a salty sweater, which then makes you think you need more sodium, because you're a salty sweater.

So actually mixing it up, as you said, and that's when you go beyond what is it after an hour's exercise, or Yeah, okay, so anything. So for the average person who's basically looking to stay fit for kind of health and longevity, and performance, and they're exercising for an hour or less a day. Actually, if they're using like Celtic or seesaw, or, you know, something like Redmond wheel, and adding it to food, they're probably getting what they need.

Exactly. And if you're really concerned, because it's a really hot day, then you can put a 16th teaspoon of just normal salt into 500 to seven females, and a teaspoon of maple syrup. Then you have everything you need. It's a perfect drink for staying hydrated and a hot day while you exercise.

Unless it's the salt and sugar. Amazing. Thank you so much for answering all these questions. How can people keep up to date because the books brilliant, we will link to that obviously, in the show notes. You're always doing new research, you've got some exciting mini courses that I've seen as well on your website. Yeah. Please Share, share, share, please, Stacy, how can people find this? How can they consume your content?

So the website, doctor 60 seven.com has all the stuff that we're up to. That's where you can buy them micro learning. So those are the small little bullet courses, a deep dive on specific topics. I'm pretty excited about that, because I get so many questions. And I like to geek out talks about our menopause course that we're revamping coming out some of the upcoming courses that are coming out. This of all the research projects is going on. So all the details are found on the website. But then for real short snippets of stuff, what's going on social media for Dr. Stacey Sims on Facebook and Instagram. And then you'll get a short sharp view of what's going on and some helpful information every day.

Amazing. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing all of that. We will link to all of it in the show notes. And thanks again for coming on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been fun. It's been really fun.

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