The Crackin' Backs Podcast

Women Aren’t Small Men—But We’re Still Training Them Like They Are- Dr. Stacy Sims

• Dr. Terry Weyman and Dr. Spencer Baron

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In a world where women follow the same training, nutrition, and recovery advice as men—and still feel off, overtrained, or under-recovered—this episode changes everything you thought you knew.

Today we’re joined by Dr. Stacy T. Sims, PhD, a world-renowned exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist who has spent over two decades challenging the idea that “women are small men.” Instead, she’s helped pioneer a female-focused science of performance, health, longevity, and hormones.

In this conversation we explore:
• What top trackers like HRV and hormones actually mean for women
• Why traditional strength programming may be holding women back
• The physiology behind stress, adaptation, and burnout unique to women
• How hydration, sodium, and recovery shift through the menstrual cycle and menopause
• Nutrient timing, macronutrient needs, and performance fueling that truly works

This episode is for women who are successful, driven, and quietly frustrated—you’re not weak, you’re just following the wrong blueprint. If you’ve ever felt like your body wasn’t matching your effort, this episode will help you train, eat, and recover with confidence based on real female physiology.


About Dr. Stacy Sims

Dr. Stacy T. Sims, PhD is a forward-thinking international exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist whose research has transformed how women train and fuel for performance and long-term health. She has directed programs at Stanford University, AUT University, and the University of Waikato focused on female athlete health and performance. Her best-selling books ROAR and Next Level explain how women should match training and nutrition to their physiology—not generic male models. She’s also known for her influential Women Are Not Small Men TEDx talk.


Learn More

 Dr. Stacy Sims Official Website: HERE
ROAR, Revised Edition Book Info: HERE
Stacy Sims YouTube Channel: HERE
Next Level Book Info: HERE

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Right? Well, we're so honored to have Dr Stacy Sims on our show today. And you know, Stacey, most people quote you, but very few actually challenge the limits of what you're discovering. And today, we're not here to interview but we're here to explore the edges of female psychology, physiology, everything with you, and so we're so honored to have you on our show.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

No thanks for having me. I'm looking forward.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

There you go, and all the way from New Zealand. That's that's pretty, pretty awesome.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

I'm the future girl because it's actually tomorrow. Yes, that's

Dr. Terry Weyman:

time travel. This show just became a time traveling machine. Yeah, all right, you shifted the industry with women or not small men. And I first started seeing these talking about cold bludgeons and all that. But what's the next big variable we're still missing, in your opinion?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Ro, right now, I'm really going after the longevity conversation, right? Because we see all this stuff, and again, it's being brought out by the middle of the bell curve, which is primarily male data. But we look there's sex differences in every system of the body. Women age a little bit differently, as we see from autoimmune diseases and how they occur. But then we also have to bring in lifelong exercisers, right? That's not part of the conversation. If we look at some of the epigenetic changes that happen in a woman's body if she's been exercising her life, and what kind of exercise that is, versus a man who's been exercising his whole life, and what kind of that, what kind of things he's been doing, and how that's affected his body. None of that is brought into the conversation yet, but that's mine. I'm bringing it in.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

That's what we're going to talk about. I mean, even with female focused training, you know, there's still, as you said, the data, the recovery, the wearables, that's all be misinterpreted, because that the science behind it was based off of men. So these women are watching wearing this stuff, and they're wondering why they have different read output, their biometrics are changed, and all that. But you're saying this all based on men? How the how do we get that conversation to switch, and where does it how do we start looking at the data differently?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Yeah, and then that's the problem. I mean, we've seen a big positive shift in the research, especially sports science research, in about the past six or seven years, where they're really starting to go after women and really taking into account menstrual cycle. It's not perfect yet. Still have a lot of things to do, but at least that shift is coming. We're also seeing it in some of the healthcare work that's that's coming out too, looking at sex differences in a lot of the disease presentation. So we're seeing this shift in the research, and now we have to have a shift in the dissemination of that and how we are expressing it. I think one of the biggest things that is a driver is AI, and algorithms that are behind all of the metrics for AI, as well as wearables. Again, it's still the middle of the bell curve, and we're just creating an echo chamber of data where we think about who's writing the algorithms, where the data is coming from, how the machine learning is occurring. Again, it's all in that middle of the bell curve. So there's a group of us on the outside that are pushing and saying, We have to look at the nuances here. We have to have female data sciences data science engineers writing some of the algorithms, because they're writing through the female lens. They understand the experience, they look at the nuances. So we do have to go back into industry and say, hey, look, we can't just keep doing this from male lens. We can't just keep generalizing and having the same output, even the language output in some of the platforms that we have, right? We'll see some of the training platforms are are very aggressive in their language of, Oh, you went slower today. Maybe you need to take a recovery instead of oh, maybe you're using a different bike, or maybe you were on a coffee ride. Like, there's no other input. It's all this really aggressive, negative type language, and women don't ascribe to that as much. Yes, of course, there are outliers, but for the most part, women get really put off, and then they're like, I don't really want to use that product anymore. So there's a lot of things that we have to kind of unpack and go after

Dr. Terry Weyman:

an industry. If you were the if you were to actually rebuild the system from scratch, what's the first thing you fixed? Where did you start? Where would you start?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

I would start all the way back, back, back, back when all of medicine started, instead of having a room full of because, I mean, really seriously, this is the history, right? Like, you have to think about how things have evolved, like, who was in the room, who started things? And we think about modernization of medicine, and we think about you. The way scientific design was originated, it was all men in the room, right? So it wasn't even a concept that women might be different. But if there had been women in the room, they could have said, Hey, wait a second, you guys don't have a monthly lead, or you don't have this, you don't have that, you don't have pregnancy. So we have to bring that into the conversation too. So I would reverse all the way back to the start of modern medicine and science and put a different perspective into the room, knowing that it can't do that. How do we do it now? So this is where we start the conversation and go, if you're because there are things that that haven't even been designed or put out yet, that we'll see in three years, like the ideas haven't even come out. So we started the conversation now, as those ideas develop in 2345, years, it will already have all of this encompassed. So it's like, Let's push those conversations out. So can't go back in time. Let's start now.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

All right, so what biomarkers should women actually be paying attention to and following that nobody's talking about,

Dr. Stacy Sims:

oh, I think part of it right now is we just have to do trends over time, things like heart rate variability that's been so like thrown into as a recovery marker. It's not specifically accurate for women, because the initial algorithm is looking at how we have beat to beat for men. But there's a there's a slight difference in beat to beat length between men and women. So an algorithm will show up as women have a little bit of a less recovery because of this algorithm. And then we see across the menstrual cycle or hormonal contraception, there's a difference between phases where we see autonomic nervous system changes, so then the heart rate variability plummets, because if we have a change in the autonomic nervous system due to progesterone, then we'll have a decrease in a resting heart rate. We'll have a decrease in our sorry an increase in our resting heart rate, an increase in our respiratory rate, which means a decrease in a heart rate variability. So if we're looking at trends over time, then we can see specifically how it fluctuates over whatever hormone profile or life phase we're in. Even in pregnancy, we see changes, and then there's a dip right before birth. So we can use it for trends over time, but we can't use it as a day to day metric, and I think that's how we have to look at most metrics that are out there. Is a day to day is not appropriate trends over time?

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Yes, especially when you're dealing with 25 year olds and pre parent, pre menopausal there's, there's a huge gap that doesn't happen to men and women. Have to pay attention to that as well, right?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Yeah, exactly, exactly, because we look at the way that people of you aging and changes in cardiac function, we're thinking of a linear change, which is primarily what happens as men get older. There's a linear change in things. But for women, we have these just center discernible points, like we have a specific change at puberty, where we're seeing biomechanical and cardiovascular changes, then we have our reproductive years, and what does that look like? Do you have PCOS, which is a different cardiovascular output from heart rate variability and such, than someone who has endometriosis, depending on the phase, then someone who's on an oral contraceptive pill versus an IUD versus naturally cycling? So you really have to understand your own hormone profile. Then we have pregnancy, and then we have, you know, times of high stress and heavy training for athletes, and that also affects it. And then we go into perimenopause, which is all over the show, and then post menopause, which is a completely new baseline. So there's not linear anything in women's lives, right? But we've just assumed that this is the data, and this is how it scopes from decade to

Dr. Terry Weyman:

decade. We can't just tell our women to suck it up. Can we

Dr. Stacy Sims:

good and then we can

Dr. Terry Weyman:

or or spend items get put out into the dog house.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I'll hear it later. Oh my gosh. Well, I want to ask, you know, it's interesting, because a lot of what you're talking about just is so seriously justifiable because of the the old research that was done, and that the the the way that doctors, especially gynecologists, that have been educated even even today, but even the old timers are still under the influence of that old Research. So if you ask them about, you know, testosterone or estrogen, they go, Oh no, no, you can't, shouldn't do that stuff, you know, that kind of thing. So it's just fascinating how antiquated their thinking is, and in the schools and it, you know, so contingent on you to change that, you know, shift the consciousness. So with that said, I want to ask you. About strength training, because that's a big conversation for women now. And I remember the days where, you know, women were told they had osteoporosis or osteomalacia, osteopenia, things like that, and they were told to go on Fosamax and all those things. What happened to strength training? Can you want to talk about that a little bit?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Yeah, and this is where we look at like the sociocultural that things that come into play, right, the fashion magazines and what's appropriate and how you look. And it wasn't really until early 2000s when CrossFit kind of became in vogue, that it was okay for women to lift heavier weights and have muscle because, like in the 90s, you had the supermodels, right? That were all really tall and thin. And, yeah, exactly the Kate mosses, right? So you have these fat burning or aerobics with weights, which were, like, the two pound dumbbells for toning, and so that was all the conversation, right? So strength training never came into it, because if I think about like some of my relatives who were also like, you need to get on fossil max. And they're like, what? I don't want to go on to that. I don't want to do that. And so they didn't, you know, and so it's like, well, what? What recommendations do they have to kind of take care of that? There weren't any. And now I think about it, as if a physician had said you need to do strength training, they would have been like, no, wait, what? No, I don't want to get bulky. So that is still in that mentality, right? We still have so many women who say, I don't want to get bulky. But what is bulky? Right? It's not about like being Arnold Schwarzenegger type bulky, right? It takes a lot to build muscle. Takes a lot. I mean, right now I'm five weeks post surgery, and I've lost 40% of my strength in five weeks. So I'm like, Oh my gosh, I have so much to build back. And this was just a keyhole meniscal surgery, right? So it was like, pain inhibition and that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's really difficult to gain it, but really easy to lose it. So this is why I get so frustrated when women are like, I don't want to get bulky. I'm like, what does that mean? What does that mean? We think about strength training and all the benefits it gives you, not only are you getting more muscle, which is an active tissue, which helps with things like your body composition, the cereal, fat, blood glucose regulation. It helps keep you warm, thermoregulation. It also supports your skeletal system. It pulls on the skeletal system to increase your bone density. Like there's so many positive things about strength training and having muscle especially as we get older, we see that people who you know we're having the conversation about sarcopenia, and it's becoming earlier and earlier because of such a sedentary younger population. So we're not seeing bone density growth that we should in our teens. We're not seeing the muscle growth that usually should happen in our teens. So we're seeing sarcopenia and osteoporosis and all those issues in younger and younger generations. So it's like, why are we not pushing strength training as the be all, end all, for almost every disease that's out there, it should be like the baseline for everything to improve population health.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Should it be different for Peri menopausal versus post menopausal, that type of strength training,

Dr. Stacy Sims:

when we look inherently at the physiology of muscle, right? We know that the contractile proteins are myosin and actin, and myosin is is very interesting, because it's also driven by estradiol. So it estrogen or estradiol e2 really helps myosin function. So as we start having fluctuations in estrogen, we start losing our power, because we start losing the ability for myosin to grab onto actin and have a very strong, tight contraction. So this is where we look at, what are we doing in the strength training realm that will invoke myosin to adapt the way it should right? So this is where we look at the heavier loads, and we're looking at the lower rep ranges, so the more the power based end to have a different response in the body to make acting go, Wait a second, I do have to grab on tightly to act in and have a very strong, powerful contraction. And then we also want to add in some tempo work and some explosiveness in that so that we can maintain power. Because now we're seeing that power is one of the really premier aspects of predicting longevity or health span, like, how are we going to live life? Well, if we lose our power, then we have an indication that we're losing our muscle and our muscle quality. So if we maintain it, and we look at the power based end of things as we start getting into perimenopause and continuing into post menopause, then it preserves the muscle quality. And I think that's part of the nuances that were missing in a lot of the conversation, where we're like, women lose lean mass, so we have to do the hypertrophy type stuff. Well now with Brad schoenfeld's new thing that's been circulating, saying there that that's an old idea. Of having these rep ranges for hypertrophy, it's like, yes, I've been saying that, like, you will get lean mass and strength if you do the Power Base end of things. So you're taking care of two birds with one stone. If you stay in that eight to 12 rep range, which everyone thinks about hypertrophy, it's more of a metabolic cost. Yes, you're going to get some increase in lean mass, but you're not addressing the full power loss issue there, because you're not instigating more of a central nervous system response to make myosin step up. So this is where we have to really consider, where are we in this schematic of things, even women who are amenorrheic, who are in their reproductive years and have hypothalamic amenorrhea or some other loss of estrogen, they, too, should be looking after the power base, end of things. So it's all about the hormonal profile and how that affects every system of the body. And this is where I might I'm not just S and Z. I'm not just X Phys. It's like, let's look at all systems and how we have this interplay of what we can do externally to make an adaptation internally to improve overall function.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Oh, do I love this conversation or, I mean, this is, this is fantastic. Let me. Let me just backtrack a moment. You said eight to 12 reps, understood. But for strength, are you suggesting less repetitive, like, less than, you know, maybe five or six repetitions.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Yes, absolutely. Like we see that, you know, we have that, that reps in reserve of two or one, and we want that it takes while to get there. Like we say, it's a journey to learn how to lift heavy, and it is. It's a right to lift heavy because you have proper technique. You understand reps in reserve, writing, perceived exertion.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Terry always he asked me if I if I read, if the speaker or guest registered on the goose bump scale. So I just showed him my

Dr. Terry Weyman:

you hit it within like the first 15 minutes you got the goose bump goose scale, so you nailed it. Awesome. Love it. Love it. Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Sorry, tempo. Are we talking a slow, like negative? Are we What are you suggesting both?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

So again, it's like, How far along are we in our training journey, and how robust are our muscles to different stressors, right? Because it's about stress resilience to avoid injury, because if we get injured, then we go backwards. We don't want people that to get injured, and also women who are just coming into the strength training journey. We don't want to have increased barriers. So we're like, okay, let's work within the realms of what you're comfortable with. Maybe they are doing lightweight but we're doing some tempo work, because we're working more eccentrically, and that's going to improve our strength, right? So if we're looking at improving strength, then it builds the confidence to be able to lift heavier, and then we also have fringe contrast, which is more advanced, but if we have women who are, you know, had a strength training history, and they're trying to develop more power and the lower power based stuff. They're like, I'm really strong, but I'm losing power. It's like, okay, well, let's put in some French contrast. So that's the idea of lifting really heavy, like a three rep, kind of three rep sets, right into an explosive movement, into maybe six reps. So we're looking at, okay, if we're doing squats to improve power and function there, we're doing a heavy set of three. Maybe we're doing two or three sets of this heavy set of three, right into some jump squats, or maybe some box jumps or something like that. We have that explosive power right off the end, right into a set of six at 50% right? So we're looking at hitting all those ends, and it's really hard, so that's more advanced, but it's so powerful and function.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You two were talking about surfing before the show started. Little did I know that we were going to dive into strength training. Most

Dr. Stacy Sims:

of my friends laughed, because I come from an endurance background. I've been Ultra runner. I've been higher Manning, I raced Xterra, race, road bikes, all this kind of stuff. But I've had strength training kind of as the undercurrent, and as I've learned more about it through education and through, you know, reading the research, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is like, everyone should start this when they're in puberty.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, right. So I laugh, you know, what the myths and misconceptions over the years? I laugh at the fact that it, you know, when I was in high school, I remember high impact aerobics, Jane Fonda workouts, you know? And it's, I mean, people were coming with those injuries and stuff. So I think it's fascinating that now we are massively shifting that perspective, and actually to back up some of the other this, the importance of this, I had, we have a patient that's an oral surgeon that has been doing this for 10 years, and I asked him the other day I go, I understood that Fosamax was actually causing deterioration and necrosis of the jawbone when. You guys would go in and do oral surgery. There was nothing to anchor any of the prosthesis in. And he goes. It was a enormous problem amongst those who were taking fozmax. It was fascinating.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

So a friend of mine is a bone expert here, and she explained to me, so when you have the BI phosphonates, which is what fosmax is. It's more like lacquering on layers of wallpaper, right? So you think about, it's lacquering on wallpaper to create a structure, but the internal part is not touched. So if you think about, you know, all the density of something around a weak structure, you're going to have collapse. But now that we're looking at how are we going to actually invoke osteoblasts in class to work together to build internally, we have to have that multi directional stress and ground reactive forces, because that's the natural way that we are boosting bone, not lacquering on a solution,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

yeah, breaking down trabecular patterns in the bone to build it back up. That's what naturally happened. You know, it was 25 or 30 years ago. One of our radiologists was doing a seminar and mentioned something about, he used chalk as an example of, yeah, it looks great on X ray. You're it looks or a bone scan. Look, the Fosamax is working. No it's actually causing it to be more brittle, because it stops osteoblast or osteoclastic activity. And it's almost as saying, Don't ever scrub your face ever again. And all of a sudden that dead skin is just going to break off. And you know, you're not going to have healthy skin under anyway. I think that's absolutely brilliant, and our lay people should be really listening to this idea of shifting the strength training, especially for females at those 40 and over years. I do have a question. I know you're big on creatine. How about that with training and all that? Because I've been asked that several times by females, and I don't know enough, do you? Yeah?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

So with creatine, I mean, like, it originated in all the bodybuilding stuff, right? So it's like, Let's load five grams four times a day, and really get the full no one wants that if you miss your like, when the bodybuilding set. So when we're looking at how how creatine works in every system of body. Naturally, it's like every fast energetic of the body uses it, because it's the ATP, CP cycle, right? So you were thinking about brain health, heart, lungs, every everything, even skin. So if we take a small dose of creatine, three to five grams daily, then it fully saturates all tissues of the body and just enhances their function. So now we're seeing more and more research come out about brain health and cognitive function and how creatine is so important because we have changes in brain metabolism, right? And unfortunately, we're seeing less and less lactate production because people aren't doing as much high intensity work, and lactate is preferred fuel by the brain. So if we're having no learning of the brain to switch from glucose to lactate and we're relying heavily on glucose, it needs a little bit of a boost. So if we're looking at creatine, it helps with all the brain function. If you're doing a lot of high intensity work, then yes, you want creatine, because it also helps support that muscle and lactate production. So it feeds forward to better brain and neuroplasticity and cognitive function. So that's just one example of why just a low dose of creatine helps, and also with diet culture and unfortunately, the GLP, one kind of culture that's coming across. We're not having as much ingestion of creatine reach rich foods, especially by women, because we're thinking about all of our our meat based products that have creatine and one you get too full, because we're talking about the equivalent of 20 chicken breasts in a day, to get that three to five grams. So no one's going to ingest that much. But in a daily intake, you know, your liver makes about two, maybe three, depending on on what your body composition is, and you just want to boost it.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Oh, that is, that's golden. Thank you. So women. Well, listen this. I don't know if it's just this generation or my perspective on things, how stressed and and the lack of sleep and how overloaded women are today. Are we? Are we seeing a new, you know, physiology emerge? Are we seeing like, you know, like chronic sympathetic drive, you know, changes in cycle adaptation, menopausal transit. What comment on that something that's so different from 20 years ago?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Maybe? Yeah, so we're seeing an increase in our Tiger bit wired, which is that increased sympathetic drive, right? And so many of you are like, Oh, how do I become unplugged? It's like, we're constantly being, like, bombarded with sight and sound. And if you ask someone to go for a drive in their car with no music on and no noise, they're like, what I can't do that. It's like, but that's what you need, right? We need you to be able to sit in silence and be comfortable and. Not be completely lambasted by sight, sound action all of the time. We even the billboards that are changing as you're driving past like everything is just being absorbed, and all the primary jobs and everything is all online, so you're always being stimulated. There's no real method within our society today to have that stop gap to be okay, yeah, I need that, that that kind of calm, to bring parasympathetic in. So that's why we're having enough surgeons of let's go for a walk in nature, because that's so much more powerful than going for a walk on a treadmill when we're talking about parasympathetic, because the treadmill is still an action that still has the lights. It's still something that's not allowing your brain to completely turn off, whereas if you're going for a walk in nature, you're just kind of like wandering through and your brain's able just to turn off.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

That explains so much. I mean, the idea of just going for a walk outside, and I've always heard that people that go on vacation, it takes about a week for out in the wilderness or something. It takes, like, a week for them to, you know, adapt to the calm, yeah, because we're so overloaded.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Oh, there was a segment on the news here last night about mental health, and they are so overwhelmed in the services that they're having to have people on wait lists because of anxiety, depression, sympathetic, driven mental issues, because everyone is just so overstressed and overwhelmed with the way that the world is going right now. And it's like, yeah, okay, well, one of the first things to do is have people turn off, get off the screens. Like, that's one of the first things that we should be talking about.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

So I, I would did a walk on Christmas day and in Malibu, and it was gorgeous, and I'm walking along this path that overlooks the ocean, and I must have run into because of the beautiful day, it's a holiday. I must have run into over 100 people, and I think I was the only one not on this phone. Everybody was walking with this. They're walking in beautiful but their phone is right in front of their face, and they two people bumped into me because they didn't even see the guy that was walking in front of them. And if they weren't looking at their phone, they were always taking pictures. They were just, I know it's easy to say you need to get off their phone. I mean, fact, the people that bumped in me, I said, Put your phone away, enjoy the day. But is our isn't it? Is, what is some strategy that we can give these people or talk about because it was terrible. I mean, hire people and that was the only one not on their phone. It was a gorgeous day. I mean, that would have happened 20 years ago. So is, what's some advice you have?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

So I've implemented the airplane mode where, on Saturday, I put my phone on airplane mode, and people like, I can't get a hold of you. I was like, if you need to get a hold of me, you know, you can come over. You can do the old fashioned way of like, calling the phone that's my husband's and not mine. But I'm on airplane mode, because I just need a day where I have completely disconnected and I've gotten some friends to do and like, Oh my God, I feel so much better. It's just like, just breaking that addiction of checking all the time, and my phone's on silent, and the only time I know there's a notification is if it buzzes, but sometimes I don't even hear that. It's like, what can we do with our devices to take control instead of the device controlling us. And I see this like I've been the mean mom, where I'm like, you can't have a phone for my daughter, who just turned 13, and she did end up getting a phone, but there's no social media. There's none of that, but she's always checking messages. Now she's always, I'm like, put the phone down. You can't have your phone in your room. You have to put the phone down that we've certain time limits around it, because I can see, just in the past four or five months, how fast that addiction has come. So as adults, we should be able to say, You know what, I'm taking control. I want to take control of this. So I'm going to put these in. I'm going to put you do not disturb on. I'm going to have Airplane Mode day, because we've all gotten into this immediacy of here's a notification. I got to check it. I'm going to miss something. Everyone has FOMO. It's like but life around you isn't going to change dramatically in an hour, unless there's an emergency. But how many people have that emergency within an hour? So just put it down for an hour. Try that. Put it away for an hour, go outside for an hour. Don't think about it. Just have presence within what you're doing. And when you start implementing that and explaining it to people like this device is controlling you. You don't have control over it makes people go, whoa. Wait a second. Yeah, you're right. Okay, how am I going to do this?

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Oh, so women have typically been known to have great instinctive behavior. Their instincts are always sharper than most men. So with all the data that they're being overwhelmed with, you know, whether it's you know, on their phones or watches or rings or what have you you know it's. It affecting how instinctive women are with their bodies and people around them? Yeah, 100%

Dr. Stacy Sims:

because we're seeing like there's so much confusion when you get all the data and they don't know where to go, so they're looking at like a lot of people are just following in their Apple Watch. I had someone email me going, I've done all this training, and my job is pretty active, but I'm 5000 steps away from closing my circle my Apple Watch. Does this mean I need to go for a walk at night too? I'll say, no, no. That means nothing. It's just arbitrary. Right? What you need to do is have your Apple Watch Signal you to get up from your desk or whatever and move around, incidentally, not about at the end of the day, looking going, I need an extra 5000 steps. So this is where people get confused. So people have lost that intuition. They've also lost what it means to be full, because people are eating in front of the screens and ultra processed food. It's like, we just need to, kind of like, take, as everybody does, men and women take that step back and and just take time for those natural processes of eating, of sleeping, of, you know, like interacting with family, because we've gotten so disconnected, because we are just so reliant on data and devices.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I'm so glad you brought up examples of that too. People are living it. So with that said, estrogen and hormones have they dulled women's instincts as they you know, as estrogen declines is that it

Dr. Stacy Sims:

could be, I mean, I haven't seen any research on it, but if we look at how estrogen affects the brain and all of our hormones. And I try to tell people it's like, you know, everyone talks about girls and puberty and how they have such mood swings, and one time they're really happy, next time they're like, slamming doors and yelling, I don't I don't love you anymore. And it's just drama, drama, drama. That's because we're having all of our estrogen and progesterone receptors being activated, and they there's different fluctuations of these hormones, and it's affecting brain development and amygdala. And we see changes in the amygdala across the menstrual cycle, so we have times of greater fear versus greater aggression. And it's because hormone interference with the receptors, or, I shouldn't say interference, but activation of receptors and the way that different structures of the brain are responding. So then when we get to perimenopause and post menopause, we're having the reverse of that, because now we're having less and less activation of our estrogen progesterone receptors. So the ones that are activated are hypersensitive, and the ones that are not being as activated start to dull down. So we're having a change in the amount of receptors. So of course, that's going to change brain function, cognition, our reaction to fear, our reaction to stress. And this is really what we're seeing a lot of when we start to have cognitive functional decline, per se, we also see that with the interruption of sleep, because we see that sleep is really the cleaning process of the brain. And in perimenopause, we have such interrupted sleep that during the day there are time lapses of concentration. That's when the brain is trying to clean itself, because it didn't get to while you were sleeping. So this lack of focus is really the brain fog, right? So we have this lack of focus and kind of this dulling of brain function, which, again, is I'm getting bombarded by all this information, and it's easier to look at the information than to intuitively cue in, because I'm so freaking tired.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You know, just how sharp you are, and there your discussion about the way the brain cleans itself, that apoptosis that occurs, that that they just, not too long ago, identified lymphatic systems in the brain that are active in even our little cat naps, Terry that we take, you know, for 10 minutes and 15 minutes where, where I feel like, like, 1,000% better just off of a five minute or 10 minute nap. Yeah, so, so, so, thank you for bringing that up, because I think that is extraordinarily important, because people are getting less sleep because of all the stimulation that they're getting from all the electronics and the lights and everything so but I want to ask you about a big topic with testosterone replacement for women. We've had several guests on in the past that you know are advocates of it, you know. But the old research tells you never to do it or not to do it, you know. You have some opinion

Dr. Stacy Sims:

on that? Well, when we look at testosterone decline, it occurs naturally in both men and women, and for the decline in women, it's not from ovarian function like estrogen progesterone, but there is an inherent hit during perimenopause, because the body is under significant stress, and we know that with significant. Significant stress, we have a decrease in testosterone, both men and women. With regards to testosterone therapy, it is beneficial in some women, but it's not a be all, end all, like some people are like, Oh, if I go on menopause hormone therapy that also includes testosterone, it doesn't because they're separate, they're separate, but can be equal. So it is, there's a time and a place for it, and does it mean that you have to be on menopause hormone therapy, the traditional sense of estrogen and progestin and testosterone, or just testosterone, or maybe you just need estrogen progesterone. So it's a very concentrated conversation, and it needs to be teased out a bit. So again, it's just like MHT, there's a time and a place for it, and the individual symptomology and experiences can dictate that. And same with testosterone. And I say that from a place of I've had to use testosterone therapy, especially like I had my kid and I was a geriatric mom, and everything bottomed out, right? So it's like I didn't get anything back for four years. Part of it was really severe postpartum depression, but I also pretty sure that was early perimenopause. So I worked with a GP, and she's like, Look, your testosterone is way lower than anything that I've seen, and so if we boost that, then let's see what happens. So went on a course of testosterone therapy, and everything kind of jump started. So it's like you need someone who understands what's going on to be able to make that definitive decision.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

You know, on that we hydration is a, is a, almost a is become almost dogmatic. Yet women are still bloating, they're still tanking, they're still feeling, you know, cramping. What has science gotten wrong when it comes to women, the hydration?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

You realize that my PhD was on hydration,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

especially when you do this, it's like, really gets us excited. Yeah, I had to, I had to go there. I had to get, you know, I had to hit your money spot, right? Yeah.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

So when we look at hydration, just in general, like we look at sports hydration and hydration, there are two myths that I need to bring up to clarify for everyone. First, when we talk about the eight to 10 glasses of water a day, just like 10,000 steps, it's based on a marketing right? So that's there's no real science behind it. And the other is this whole, like electrolyte replacement, sodium replacement idea, especially when we're talking about sports drinks, we have to think back to how it originated, right? So we think about in Florida, right? We're talking about that. So origins of Gatorade, where we have the assistant football coach and his flatmate or roommate, who is a renal physiologist, and the renal physiologist is like, hey, you know what, if you were just to add a little bit of sugar and salt to that water. It's going to help your players. And that's the origins of it all. It's like looking at physiology, and it's become this big thing, because once that started taking off, and then was bought by a corporation who then use an artificial sweetener to make it taste better, and then the FDA is like, that's no longer allowed, and took it off, then they doubled the amount of carbohydrate to make it have the same palette. Then did research on it to show that it was a really good as a carbohydrate replacement and might help with hydration. But the conversation got reversed, because you look at the earlier data coming through, and it shows that, like a one to 3% solution is optimal for plasma volume expansion, which means hydration, but Gatorade sits and all those four streams sit between five and 8% which is all about carbohydrate replacement. It's not about hydration. So again, it's marketing was stronger than science. So then when we look specifically at sex differences, there is a difference. We see that women who do a long endurance race will finish with normal blood sodium or lower, and when we look at men, they'll finish with normal blood sodium or higher. Because we look at sweat rate differences, we look at fluid accumulation differences, we look at how fluid shifts during exercise, and there are sex differences in that. So it was just two weeks ago that I saw that Gatorade is now implemented a, you know, like a sex difference research project to see how women should hydrate differently. It's like, I've been saying this for 20 years, and now we're finally having people go, Oh, wait, there's palletization differences, there fluid shift differences? There's differences in sweat rate. There's differences across the lifespan too, because when we hit Peri and post menopause, our thirst sensation isn't as strong, but our hydration needs are a little bit higher because our bodies are more stressed. So it's been very interesting to watch the evolution. Of the whole hydration space.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

All right, so doc, since, since this is your lane, what are some of your strategies for the the athlete woman, to stay hydrated, especially in different weather patterns, and the office worker to stay hydrated in different stress patterns.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

So across the board, you just need a little bit of sugar and a little bit of salt in your water. So for the office worker that's hanging out, just adding maybe 1/16 of a teaspoon into 16 to 20 ounces of water, so it's around 200 milligrams of sodium, but that's going to help actually pull the water in. And I say that because when we look at where fluid absorption happens in the small intestines. The small intestine is very sensitive, because it takes a certain amount of pressure and a certain amount of glucose and sodium to actually make everything work, to pull fluid in. So if you're just drinking plain water, then the body has to pull salt and glucose in to make it work, to be pulled out. But if you're ingesting it with a little bit of sodium, it's already there, can be pulled in, so it's a faster way, and you aren't changing your pressure within the small intestine. So it actually works when we start exercising, when we have blood flow that gets diverted away from the gut, because it goes to the muscles, and we need a little bit more help. So this is when we're looking at okay, so if I'm doing a relatively shorter, easy session, maybe I'll add a little bit of maple syrup to that, maybe a teaspoon of maple syrup with that sodium, because maple syrup has both glucose and fructose. So we know that that's because it has a sucrose in it, so it breaks down, so it actually activates all of their transport mechanisms, and that's all you need. We talk about potassium. That's more post exercise for rehydration, or a long endurance exercise when you start to have lots of fluid shifts, but you don't need all the other stuff with sodium, there's no such thing as sodium replacement, so all the sweat sodium tests, that's just a patch of what's happening under that exact patch. But that doesn't represent how much sodium your body needs. We can lose up to 50% of our sodium stores and be fine. So as long as you have a little bit of sodium in that fluid to help with fluid absorption, you're fine.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

So I'm already I'm right way. I'm already thinking about so before I work out, I just need a stack of pancakes and some maple syrup, and I'm good, huh? There you go, and some water on the side. But I got the carbs and the maple syrup to drive the water that we're gonna eat with my stack of pancakes, so I'm good, right?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Or you can have coffee, because coffee works. I can have coffee with

Dr. Terry Weyman:

my pancakes and maple syrup and little bit of water, and I'm hydrated. Yeah, heaven. I'm good,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

perfect. Try that, try that, and do a long run.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

I'll be flying the second half, because the first half is going to be digesting the second half, he's going to be

Dr. Terry Weyman:

saying, I'll be flying Spence.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Wait, you know what? Look a patient, or one of my interns, told me about the Krispy Kreme run that's done in Florida. Do you know about this? No, it's a, it's a, you have to eat 12 Krispy Kreme glazed donuts and go for a one mile or five mile run or something like that. Yeah. And there's even a strategy on how to do it, and that is that you the smart people that have to eat the 12 donuts, they compress them into their little flat pancake, and they eat them, and then go for there are more people vomiting on the side of the road. So, so you and your pancake might

Dr. Terry Weyman:

not work that well. I'll be happy. I'll be happy. I'll be happy for the first three steps.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Are you having one of the light, fluffy, protein pancakes? Are you having the dense iPod?

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I know I'm going to Kodiak once. Yeah.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Trying to make a glue. Let me ask you about electrolytes. That's a big comment. Yeah, you know, you talk about salt and, you know, sodium and so on. And the maple syrup idea. I think that's great. But you hear a lot about electrolytes, yeah, loss of electrolytes, yep. Is that good enough? What you just suggested?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

And yeah. And then, you know, when you start to eat real food, you replace the electrolytes, yeah, yeah, true. Because most people aren't going out on a daily basis and doing a half Ironman, full Ironman or, you know, any kind of like ultra long endurance race. So if you're up to five hours, that's all you need. But when you start getting five hours plus, then we start looking at your food choices to help with magnesium and potassium and that kind of stuff. But it's not about gaffing your bottle with all this stuff like limit and all these other precision hydration Yes, I'll call them out, because they're just banking on this whole, like marketing idea of you have to replace all the sodium, because if you don't, you're going to die. It's like, no, that's not how body works. It's not how the body works. You're going to have be a sweaty, salty sweater if you use that stuff. But that doesn't mean that you need more salt. It means that you're sweating out the x. Just stuff your body doesn't eat

Dr. Spencer Baron:

nice, yeah. And on the opposite end of the spectrum is that, you know, back to your eight, eight ounce glasses of waters. That was something that we heard many years ago, that was the rule of thumb. And now people walk around with the gallon jug that they have to knock off in a day.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

No, it's Yeah, so one of my good friends, who actually was my PhD supervisor, he was like, people are killing the thirst stimulus. As soon as you put water in your tongue, you kill the thirst stimulus. So your body actually never really gets hydrated. And when you walk around and you're drinking all these gallons of water, you end up peeing it out, so you end up being more dehydrated and hydrated, you're flushing and everyone's like, Oh, I'm drinking all this water. My urine is really clear. I'm really hydrated, but yet I'm still thirsty. It's like, because your body is just flushing it out. It's too much. There's no way for your body to absorb that much water. What are you flushing out? You're just really just peeing out. What you're taking in.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You know that is, this is the perfect time to mention that over hydration can actually hurt you. We had a one of my patients was a major league baseball pitcher for the New York Mets, and he was told, because they come down to South Florida, hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. He was on the mound. He's pitching his last, the last inning, and he started feeling numbness and tingling down the arm. Long story short, he and they win the game. He walks into the dugout and passes out, yeah? And they're asking him, what happened? What happened? Did you hydrate? Yeah. I mean, I've knocked off, you know, gallons of water, like, No. He over hydrated. Ended up having to go in the hospital, because

Dr. Stacy Sims:

that's how I came up with my PhD topic. Because I was racing Kona, and at the turnaround, I, like, got really bloated and dizzy. I'm like, What is going on? And then I ate a gastrolite, which is one of those electrolyte tablets that you have when you have GI distress and diarrhea and stuff. Like, I had a few, and I had one, and then I had to pee like a racehorse, and it's because I wasn't having enough sodium. I was just drinking a lot of the water because I was so thirsty. And so, like, hyponatremia is a risk for women, especially when you're in the high hormone phase of your menstrual cycle, which I was. And then I got back, and I was like, whoa, what was that? And then I started investigating. Oh, look, there are sex differences and phase differences in sodium. So that kind of perpetuated the whole hydration.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

So are you saying that most women or people should never drink just plain water? They should always put a little salt in there

Dr. Stacy Sims:

if they're just drinking, but if they're eating food with it, because food has all, you know, has sodium and stuff, then it's okay. Interesting.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

It's a minute. And the point that I think is really good to deliver again is that how we're reducing our I don't want to say instinctive behavior, but our thirst reflex by guzzling water, because there's a rule of thumb, whereas Shouldn't you know? You pay attention to what your body is telling you versus what you you know.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

And so you're exercising, and then the biochemical part doesn't work. You can't necessarily rely on thirst when you're exercising, because there is a change in palletization as well as blood flow. So it changes thirst, sensation.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

All right, so let me ask you, if you wrote, If you rewrote sports nutrition entirely for women, what would you what would be the first three chapters?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Oh, I talk about why we shouldn't be fascinating, why we should be fueling for all of our training and circadian rhythm. So I put all of that in. And then when we talk about, like, what we should be using on a course, or before and after, like, getting into the nuances of short versus long, intensity versus, like, moderate endurance versus strength, and really kind of going, these are the things. There's no blanket statement of what you should have before and after depends on what you're doing, how long it's, how long you're going, what the temperature is. We know that there are changes in thirst, sensation and tolerance, in the change of seasons that people aren't necessarily aware of. So really get into all that and then, like, map it out and say, Are you this type of woman doing this? This is what you should do. Are you this type of woman doing this, this is what you should do. That's awful.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

That's great. I'm hearing a lot of patients that Dr Terry and I, mainly we treat active people, athletes and so on. But I hear a lot of women being told to watch your macros. What does that actually mean? And you know, does that truly work for women, or how does that work?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

I think it's an answer to watching your calories, and I'm not a huge fan of watching calories or counting macros like it came into. Know you need X amount of grams of protein X amount of grams of carbohydrate. No one really talks about fat so much, right? And so people get so nuanced about these macronutrients, but they forget about the aspect of whole food and how fiber with protein makes you feel fuller and have better blood glucose response. Even if you don't hit your total macros, you're still hitting all the nuances of taking care of your gut microbiome, helping with adaptation. So I really try to push people away from macros and go, well, let's just look at how you're distributing food, and what that food intake is like. As an expat coming over to the states, I'll walk into a grocery store and go, Oh my God, there's rows and rows and rows of stuff, but nothing to eat, because it's all like sugar fried Ultra you know, there's protein Pop Tarts, there's all this ultra processed stuff. Everyone's putting the buzzwords on like, no wonder people are confused. Like, I'm gonna go back to the 1990s idea of shop the perimeter and eat what your grandparents would eat. And that's what I tell my kid when we go to the States, I'm like, don't go up and down the aisles, because that's all the stuff of the pretty packaging that's not really going to make you full or healthy. Is a walk around and then maybe go in the middle for some accent food.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I am so glad she's saying these are all the things that that people are being convinced or marketed about, that that alone is absolutely perfect, all right, so, if there was, if there was a principle, a principle that's grossly misunderstood in female nutrition today, is there one thing that really like drives you, that you feel they need to know?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Yeah. I mean, there's still that whole thing of calories in, calories out, eat less, hold your fast till noon or after, like, all of these things that promote low energy availability and active people. And we see, like, there's over 50% of recreationally active women because of diet trends and and other conversations that they're actually in low energy availability, so they're not eating enough to support their lifestyle and all the stress that happens as well as their exercise. It's not clinically overt, because most aren't going to demonstrate with lots of menstrual cycle dysfunction or other things, but there are low lying things that come up, like change in blood lipids or change in iron status, but still not low enough for a physician to like intervene, because the standards and reference ranges have shifted because it's a population mean. So we remember the bell curve I was talking about. It's like everything is shifted to a lower end of normal because of the generally sedentary, unhealthy population against which it's measured. So as an active person, you might go in, and five years ago, a ferritin of 50 would have gotten you on to okay, we really need to look at this and try to boost your ferritin. But now they're like, 50. Wow. That's amazing. Get down to 20, and then that's when we start to talk about something. It's like 20 is way too low. So there's this whole like, I really want women to understand that we want to fuel according to circadian rhythm. And if you want to fast, then do a normal overnight fast, where you stop eating when you finish dinner, and you wake up and have breakfast, and then you have a 12 to 13 hour overnight fast. But actually that helps with sleep. It helps with circadian rhythm, helps with parasympathetic it helps with body composition. It helps with blood glucose regulation. Because you're able to get into really good, solid sleep if we're holding a fast or we're not fueling appropriately, we start to see a misstep in circadian rhythm, appetite, hormones, we have less incidental movement. We have the afternoon wall lean because we're too tired, and we have interruption of sleep because then at night, you're so hungry, and it's in your eating window that you end up bookending your calories to the end of the day, which means that you're still trying to digest instead of being able to relax and get into good sleep. So just explaining that is the biggest thing I think, that we could do to promote health in women in general, you

Dr. Terry Weyman:

know, yeah, you'll have a TV show with a well known doctor of longevity, with some very well known actor, and they were promoting a week long fast, and they said, after the first three or four days, everything, just it started eating up all the garbage in our body, and you sleep better, and everything is better. How do you combat that?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Yeah, it eats up your lean mass, in your muscle, and then you sleep better because your body is so tired, because it doesn't have fuel to actually do what it needs to do. So everything is down regulating. We see after three days of low energy availability, which this is, your thyroid starts to downturn and be down regulated. So it's like, if you want to really cause a longer term effect on your endocrine system, try that fast. But if you really want to get benefit, your body is designed to move. It's designed to be fueled for that movement. Then it's designed to be able to recover and eat all of the stuff and clean at night when you're sleeping. But if you're not allowing your body to get into a natural rhythm and get into that good sleep pattern, then you're not going to get the benefit. So again, probably the longevity doc and the actor will probably bro science men can hold on to that for a little bit longer, because their bodies are different than women, right? They don't have to support a menstrual cycle and a greater drain on endocrine system. So this is where I get frustrated,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

and that's where I wanted to go with that one. I wanted your opinion, because the argument is, well, our ancestors had to go days and weeks without until their next meal, they didn't know where it was going to go, or these are these religious journeys they would take for weeks, and all that, that would be the argument. So how do you, how do you counteract that argument?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Yeah, so when we look at that, there were no babies being born during that time frame, because we look at what happens when women don't have a lot of food and fuel, their endocrine system takes a big hit. So you look back in the ancestry days when you had that, the time of famine, you weren't producing kids because there wasn't enough food to support the woman's body, so there were no real viable pregnancies. I mean, of course, there's the outliers, but for the most part, there wasn't a population boom until there was a feast session, and then you were able to say there's enough food to support endocrine function. There's enough food to support endocrine function, then I can have a viable pregnancy. So if you're looking at like population, you can track it back to like which ancestral tribes had the greatest amount of food availability, and what times versus which ones died out because there wasn't enough food, or who migrated to where there was food. So this is the real important. It's like when a woman's body doesn't have enough food, what happens is you have this down regulation of endocrine function. You have an increased storage of body fat. You have a cessation of ovulation, you might still have a bleed, but that's an in ovulatory bleed, because estrogen isn't opposed by progesterone. So you'll still have endometrial tissue that gets released, but it's not ovulatory. So when we see all this infertility and stuff that's occurring, it's like, okay, well, let's look at how you're fueling let's look at inflammation. Let's look at the trends. When we correct it, we start to see an increase in fertility, fantastic.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

And now the opposite is happening. There's plenty, plenty of food, but it's great food. And you're you're giving birth to kids with these comorbidities and diseases, conditions that are not supposed sad, yeah, yeah. But the way you put it all together in such this timeline, that's fascinating. I think it's great.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I got, I got one more question before we go into the rapid. Is our case? Okay? You meet you got a lot of fame with the whole let's call it a cold plunge for women, and that just lit you up. Yet it's still on fire on social media with all these influencers. What have you learned since you first went on the attack, cold plunger for women? And now,

Dr. Stacy Sims:

interesting, I'm still going to be, like, really defined about it. And like, this is the science. It's not my opinion, and this is the problem. It's like, you'll notice that on Instagram and everything, I don't have any paid posts. I don't have any sponsorships, except for momentous, because momentous, the owners of momentous and I have the same ethos of, we want to support people, but we also want to put money back into research to close the research gap. That's the only reason I've partnered with them. But for the most part, I'm just presenting science. It's not my opinion. And so when I look at the cold plunge and getting women and going, I don't understand. I'm so stressed. I'm getting sick, and I hate cold plunging, but people are telling me I need to do it. It's like, well, actually, no, you don't. The science doesn't support ice. Science supports cool plunge for women, but it's still not as robust as heat, and it's not as robust responses as men get. Again, you're relying on both science. And then when I went out and it's like showing the science and getting attacked by this billion dollar industry because they've made so much money on the marketing, there's still a significant amount of haters. Like, Oh, Dr Stacey Sims doesn't know what she's talking about. Let's try to cancel her. It's like, Well, I'm not the only person saying it like, look at the research from the 1990s onwards, because that's what's showing, that women do better in cool water, not ice. But again, the responses that we're looking for are not as robust in women. So we had different stress responses. We have different body composition. We have different ways that our body reacts, thermo regulatory wise, the same as if you put a woman and a man in the heat. Women last better in the heat, because we vasodilate first and then we start sweating. So men's core temperatures will rise a lot faster than a woman's, because we're able to work with the environment first. So you take your wives into a sauna and both see who lasts longer you.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, that's right. Wow. That's fantastic. And Terry, do you, I don't know if you remember, but like in year one of our four year journey with these podcasts, we had a woman who teaches anatomy and physiology, and she said, she said, back then cold plunges, you don't need to do that. Just splash water over your ice water or cold water over your face in the morning. That'll wake you up and do what's necessary. Yeah, very good. Thank you for elaborating on that. Okay, we are now going to end the show with our rapid fire questions. There's five of them. They're a little personal, and I should say They're not as they're not as clinical. I No. All right, all right. There's five questions. You need to answer them quickly, because they're a rapid fire, but we always get caught up in the conversation. Are you ready for question number one?

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Go for it. Shoot it. What? What's,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

what's one health rule you tell women to follow, but secretly struggle with for yourself,

Dr. Stacy Sims:

eating regularly throughout the day.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Oh, that was good. All right, see, that's what I meant by personal. All right, you weren't doing this but researching and rewriting physiology. What alternate, alternate life plan would you be living right now

Dr. Stacy Sims:

I would be a barista and a florist for real. Wow, interesting.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Oh, that's funny, because I remember a movie where a guy who was a he worked in on Wall Street, and he ended up being a floor, a flower florist, delivery guy, because he brought happiness to everybody. He delivered,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I love coffee and flowers, so when I'm in New Zealand, I'm hooking you up. I'm gonna come by and say hi, okay, yep.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, perfect question number three, and that is, what is one thing people would be shocked to learn about you that has nothing to do with science.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Oh, yes, I got a good one in my younger days of 20s, I was a DJ in the clubs. Really? Why I still love drum and bass music. Oh, my listening agent Spotify is 21 nice.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Here we go. What's your pop up song that you would play? And I might hear your DJ voice to announce it,

Dr. Stacy Sims:

yeah, yeah. No. It's more like, I take the tables that are like, 11pm when people are already into and then open up for a bigger act. So it was more like, like, how are we mixing the vibe? So I'd go from like, house lounge into more kind of the disco boss Nova into what we now call drum and bass to kind of move the crowd on their journey. So it would go from, okay, we're all sitting around grooving, and then it's like, ooh, music's coming to pick up. Let's start dancing, and then get into the hype of, I'll pull them out when you come visit while you're drinking your coffee with the flowers? All

Dr. Terry Weyman:

right, we're

Dr. Spencer Baron:

only on Question four out of five. We got. Here we go. What is your personal instant reset. The one thing that you do when life gets overwhelming or your body feels

Dr. Stacy Sims:

a little off, I go for a ride on my bicycle on the gravel, outside

Dr. Spencer Baron:

on the gravel. Yeah, gravel. Ride bike on gravel.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Yeah. Like we're Yeah. I used to race on the road, but you can't really tell that much, but I have a lot of discoloration here, because about four, four or five years ago, I was going just on a Sunday ride and a tradie van, so, you know, plumber, whatever, came down the hill at 50 miles an hour and took me out. So my helmet, broke, My bike broke. I got a bad concussion, lost all the skin on my face, ended up with traumatic osteoarthritis. My daughter saw and so I was like, yeah, she saw me in the ambulance. And I don't remember it, but I just remember going, Oh, where am I? What am I doing? Where am I? What am I doing? She saw that. And it just freaked her out so much. I'm like, I'm not ever riding on the road anymore, because the drivers here are awful. So it's like, mountain bike, yeah, but I feel like it's too slow to be riding a mountain bike on the gravel and the farm roads, but a gravel bike, sweet. You can go everywhere.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

So that's it. That's it. So I come, I come from a cycling background, but they gravel stuff, and they would go to like, Iowa races, gravel races, and I'm like, oh my god, the boredom, which is I just put a gun to my head. So I needed, I needed the different stuff. But good on you. Though I'm sorry about that. Crash. That's crazy.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

Wow. I'm living to tell about it.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, you look you look great. And if you're ready, if you're ready for question number five, let's go this. This is a good one. If your daughters or closest friends could describe you in three words, what do you? Hope they say,

Dr. Stacy Sims:

honest, genuine, good hearted person,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

and that is how we'll end today's program, Stacy Dr. Stacy Sims, you are absolutely fantastic. The information you gave was just like over the top. Thank you so much.

Dr. Stacy Sims:

No thanks for having me, guys. It's been super fun. Loved it.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The Kraken backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at Kraken backs podcast. Catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.