Women have specific exercise and nutrition needs. Dr. Stacy Sims explains | CNN

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As reproductive health continues to be a key issue in the 2024 US presidential election, a recent executive order signed by President Joe Biden to improve women’s health research grabbed headlines. The March 18 directive is notable for its goal of integrating women’s health into federal agencies and spurring new research. The weather couldn’t be better.

For centuries, medical researchers have studied men exclusively, minimizing or completely ignoring sex differences and extrapolating their findings to women. However, women are not physiologically the same as men marked more clearly with the onset of menstruation at female puberty and two X chromosomes and have therefore often been given incomplete, poor and even harmful medical advice.

This longstanding lack of female-based research stemming from sexual and gender bias spurred Dr. Stacy Sims, an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist based in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand, has dedicated her career to determining how women should eat and exercise for a long time. optimal health If we work with our physiology knowing that women are women and men are men, knowing that women are not little men, imagine the (health) results, he said in a 2019 TED talk.

READ MORE: Lab rats are mostly male, and that’s a problem

Cardiac arrest is a good example. Although it was known in 2007 that women are almost twice as likely to die from heart attacks as men and that they report many more symptoms associated with acute coronary syndromes, a National Institutes of Health study published that year still recommended differentiating the symptoms of a heart attack. between men and women.

Even today, women remain grossly underrepresented in the medical literature, according to a study published in 2022 in Womens Health Reports. Misogynistic attitudes also remain. And while the US National Institutes of Health in 2016 implemented a policy requiring researchers to consider sex as a variable in their biomedical research, the results were mixed.

The number of studies that included women increased markedly after this policy was introduced. However, a 2019 bibliometric analysis, a rigorous means of analyzing large volumes of data, showed that the majority of more than 700 medical studies failed to analyze the resulting data by sex, limiting its usefulness.

Sims, who is also the author of the science-based book Roar, which details sex-based differences in exercise and nutrition at different stages of life, recently shared her thoughts on the topic with CNN.

Before starting any new exercise program, consult your doctor. Stop immediately if you experience pain. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: How is it that women are still so medically understudied in 2024?

Dr. Stacy Sims: I know! Isn’t that crazy? Historically, when you think about who developed science and research, women were pushed out from the beginning. Men said: Oh, women are lesser beings than us. They have smaller brains. Even Darwin said that women were not as smart because they have smaller brains. So when you think about the scientific method and how it all started, who were the people in the room? They were all men. No one really questioned the lack of educated women. They just assumed that women were smaller versions of men, so anything that works for men works for women. Tradition is really hard to change.

One thing that the Covid-19 pandemic did that I’m grateful for is making researchers sit up and say, shit, we really need to look at sex differences. Because Covid-19 was more severe in men, the side effects of the vaccine were more prominent in women. In addition, Covid has for a long time affected women more severely and affected their brains more than men. That’s why seeing all these sex-specific things come out, it’s really good science rather than being generalized.

CNN: What are some basic things every woman should do when it comes to exercise?

Sims: Any movement is good, but it’s more important for women to do strength or resistance training. It’s more for brain health. If we look at resistance training and the neural pathways it creates, we see that it actually helps to attenuate dementia and Alzheimer’s and there’s also a sex difference. Historically, however, women have not been targeted for resistance training. But in general, from young to old, women should be strength training.

CNN: Does strength training have other impacts as women approach menopause?

Sims: Yes. When our hormones start to change between 40 and 50, it has a massive impact on our body composition. We begin to lose muscle and increase body fat. But if we have that lean mass from strength training, it really helps slow down that rate of change. Strength training also helps protect our bones and helps us maintain balance and proprioception (the awareness of where our body is in space). We don’t see these kinds of changes in men until they’re in their 50s and 70s.

CNN: What about exercise differences between the sexes when it comes to cardiovascular work?

Sims: Men can get away with practicing everything. Women already have the ability to go long and slow, so we don’t have to do that kind of exercise, our bodies are already there. What we do have to do is work at high intensity – these true high intensity intervals of 30 seconds or one minute. This helps women increase their metabolic rate, helps reduce visceral (deep belly) fat, and most importantly, helps keep our gut microbiome diverse and helps improve cardiovascular health. So when we look at all the research on high-intensity training versus moderate-intensity training versus low-intensity training, we really need to emphasize that high-intensity work in addition to resistance training.

CNN: Do women recover from exercise the same way as men?

Sims: Right after exercise, there is a difference in blood pressure. Women will experience vasodilation, so all their blood will go to the periphery, while men will have vasoconstriction, meaning all their blood returns to the heart and can be pumped much faster for faster recovery. So women tend to get lightheaded and feel a little dizzy after a hard session, because all their blood is pooling. Drinking something cold right after exercise helps return blood to the core, reduces metabolites and starts the repair process.

CNN: What about nutritional differences between the sexes?

Sims: There is a big conversation about protein intake and how the recommended daily amount for women is really low. It is also based on cadaver work on men aged between 70 and 80 years. So, while protein is important for both sexes, we need to emphasize women and especially as we age, as women become more anabolically resistant to exercise and protein intake, which it means your body doesn’t respond as well to exercise and protein intake to build muscle. . Therefore, more protein is needed after exercise and higher loads or higher volume of resistance training to obtain muscle protein synthesis.

In general, women should have 1 to 1.1 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. If you’re strength training, take 15 grams of protein before a session and 30 to 35 grams after, which helps with strength and facilitates repair. For cardio work, take 15 grams of protein with 30 grams of carbohydrates before the carbs help raise blood sugar, because women’s bodies go through blood sugar quickly, but after that is when you need protein 30 to 35 grams, or 40 grams for perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women.

CNN: There’s been a lot of hype recently about the benefits of intermittent fasting, long, slow Zone 2 training, and other fads. Are they equally beneficial for men and women?

Sims: Most of the trends out there are great for men, but it’s a different story for women. My voice is always, Let’s demonstrate why what is being seen for the general population is not suitable for women, but also, what is suitable for women? Because nobody used to stop and say, OK, I heard that. But what was the population in which it was studied? If it was studied in men, it might not be great for me as a woman. Well, what is appropriate for me? That’s too many steps.

Melanie Radzicki McManus is a freelance writer specializing in hiking, travel and fitness.