You're Training Hard—But Is Your Body Actually Recovering? | Dr. Stacy Sims
What if your body is warning you that you’re under-recovered, under-fueled, or hormonally struggling—before your performance ever drops?
Dr. Stacy Sims is back on Crackin’ Backs, and this time we go beyond “women are not small men” to answer a more important question:
How can women actually learn to read what their bodies are telling them?
Stacy breaks down the early warning signs many active women overlook—from changes in sleep, menstrual cycles and HRV to iron deficiency, appetite, body temperature, fatigue and recovery.
We also get into why a woman can still be training hard, hitting PRs and looking incredibly fit while her body may already be struggling underneath.
In this conversation, we explore:
The early signs of under-recovery and overtraining in women
Why your menstrual cycle can act as a vital sign
What HRV may—and may not—be telling female athletes
The connection between iron deficiency and changes in HRV
Why waking up exhausted despite enough sleep matters
How under-fueling and low energy availability affect recovery
Why women may lose normal hunger and thirst signals during heavy training
When to push through a workout—and when to back off
Why your wearable's “recovery score” may not tell the whole story
How strength training supports women and girls across the lifespan
Why female athletes need a different approach to training, recovery and injury prevention
The growing problem of applying male-based research and algorithms to female physiology
How AI could amplify misinformation in women’s health
Stacy also shares a simple morning check-in women can use before blindly following a training plan or fitness watch: How did you wake up? What is your resting heart rate doing? Are you thirsty? How do your muscles feel? What happens after you fuel?
The goal isn't to collect more data.
It's to understand what your body is trying to tell you.
If you’re an active woman, female athlete, coach, parent, trainer or healthcare professional—or simply want to better understand women’s health, hormones, exercise, nutrition and recovery—this conversation is for you.
▶️ Watch to the end, and if conversations like this help you make better decisions about your health, subscribe to Crackin’ Backs. We bring leading experts in physical, mental and nutritional health directly to you every week.
Learn more about Dr. Stacy Sims:
Dr. Stacy Sims
Learn more about Collective X:
Stacy's new women's health intelligence platform is working to close the female health data gap with vetted, women-specific research and evidence-backed insights.
#StacySims #WomensHealth #FemaleAthlete #WomensFitness #Overtraining #Recovery #FemalePhysiology #StrengthTraining #Hormones #HRV #MenstrualCycle #SportsScience #CrackinBacks
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. Spencer Baron (00:01)
What if your body warns you that you're overtraining, underfueling, or harmonic struggling before your performance ever drops? And what if most female athletes don't know how to read those signals? Well, Dr. Stacy Sims is back. And we're not talking about why women aren't small men. We've done that already. Today, we want to know how women can actually read their own physiology. Welcome back, Dr. Stacy Sims.
Dr. Terry (00:30)
Woohoo.
Dr. Spencer Baron (00:31)
Yeah.
stacy (00:32)
Danger has
Dr. Spencer Baron (00:36)
that's great. Stace, if if I handed you a female athlete and said, All right, don't look at her performance. Tell me whether her body is actually adapting to training or quietly breaking down, what would you look at first?
stacy (00:52)
I always look at trends over time because there isn't any one thing that's a signal like
If you were to take a male athlete and look at training stress score and look at how that fluctuates, you have a better idea of what's happening. But for women we have to look at like objectively, heart rate variability changes, any menstrual cycle, irregularities or changes, sleep not how long she's sleeping, but how many awakenings are happening over each night. And then we also then have this objective, like how are you feeling and are you feeling dead and fatigue when you wake up or not?
Some of the telling things that we're finding right now, instead of using heart rate variability to look at like systematic stress, which a lot of people are like, you use heart rate variability to see, and as it starts to decline, it means you're not stress resilient. But we find that even when women are starting to reduce their training because they're feeling kind of not so great, but the heart rate variability still drops, it's an early indication that they're iron deficient. Because the the
you
know, the green LEDs or the red LEDs that are on your smart watches that read age heart rate variability, they work by reflecting off hemoglobin. So when hemoglobin starts to drop because you don't have enough iron, then your heart rate variability drops because it's not a a true clear signal. So it gives us that early indication. So when we start seeing you do all these changes, but your heart rate variability is still dropping as trends over time, well now we really want to get an early iron test to see what's going on.
So there are things that we can pull out through the signaling that otherwise gets missed.
Dr. Terry (02:32)
Mm. It's I I love her. So when you
Dr. Spencer Baron (02:36)
Yeah.
Dr. Terry (02:38)
when you got yeah, let's forget cycle sinking. You know, when women's menstrual cycle is treated like a vital sign, what is it actually telling us when it suddenly changes?
stacy (02:50)
So the it's an endocrine disruptor. So when you start to see an overload of stress, either life stress or training stress or a combination of the two, it is creating a a dampening of your HPG axis. So that means that your luteinizing hormone pulse blunts, your estradiol blunts, and so you start seeing a lengthening of the menstrual cycle because the follicular phase or the early phase of the menstrual cycle before you ovulate is all about making the body really robust.
and really immune strong so that you can ovulate and have the best chances of having a fertilized egg survive. So we started to see lengthening of the menstrual cycle because the body's under a lot of stress. And it's like, wait, wait, I can't I can't mature an egg. So let's just keep trying to see h where the stress is going to be. And then the flip side of it is when you start having really short cycles and heavy bleeding, it means there's what we call alluteal phase defect. And that means you have not really ovulated. So you
will still
Have
a bleed phase even though you don't ovulate. And so women get confused because hey, my cycle is really long, and then I had a really short cycle with a heavy bleed. Yeah, that's not normal, so we need to get that checked out. But if we look how long has your cycle extended from your norm, or how has it shortened, it gives us a really good idea of if your body's robust enough to try to ovulate, that's the shorter cycle. But if it's like wait, I'm tapped out and my hormones are dropping, and there's no way I have
the ability to ovulate, that's when we start to see the lengthening. So that's why they're saying it's a vital sign, because it's one of the first indications that your body's not in a good adaptive state.
Dr. Spencer Baron (04:31)
So not to put on birth control pills, right? I want to make that
stacy (04:34)
Exactly, exactly.
Dr. Spencer Baron (04:37)
really clear out there. Go ahead, Terry. Sorry.
Dr. Terry (04:40)
No, that's right. You know, another thing that that I think a lot of women and men don't focus on, they they look at HR V, they look at all this kind of stuff. But we had a guest talk about it, kinda sparked some interest in my my head, body temperature.
And and people don't look at body temperature that cycles throughout the day. We're not ninety eight point six all the time. We'd be dead and that's the temperature of the room. So, you know, you know, based on you you can get the if you know, people that have certain body temperatures are more depressed, some ha are more anxious. But we also sometimes don't train take supplements based on body temperature and it can affect our hydration, it can affect our mental state, recovery. What is something women need to pay attention to when it comes to body temperature?
stacy (05:25)
We know that it fluctuates. Like if you are ovulating and you have progesterone, then your internal temperature goes up. Right before ovulation it drops about a degree because of estrogen's effect. When you stop having that fluctuation, that gives you an indication that you're inovulatory or there's some kind of issue with your hormone flux.
If you end up having a higher baseline temperature because you are metabolically stressed where you're not adapting to training and you're not able to drop inflammation because your body isn't coping, then you're gonna have that higher baseline temperature which interferes with sleep.
So this is why I always turn back to sleep about awakenings and seeing how how many awakening cycles that you have during the night, even though you aren't consciously aware. If you're using a a wearable, it's it's easier to pick up the length of sleep and how many awakenings you are, and that's about all you can get. And we see that there's two reasons why we have all these subsequent awakenings. One is an elevation in temperature. So if we're not recovering well and we're metabolically stressed and have that higher inflammation, then
that higher baseline temperature doesn't allow you to get into a deep repertive sleep because your body temperature goes up and then it drops and that's when you get into a deep sleep and it stays low until you start to have a corresponding cortisol rise and then that increases your temperature as well and that's our normal wakening. If you are metabolically stressed and you have that elevation in temperature you fluctuate right on that whole wake sleep wake sleep wake sleep. So you have a very fractured sleep.
The other reason we see a lot of awakenings is hypoglycemia, because female athletes are not eating enough.
Part of it is the fueling and how they're fueling through the day, but also overall volume of calories and nutrient density. So if they're not eating enough, then they become hypoglycemic at night. And we see this with the CGM, all these awakenings can be really stopped easily if we one focus on getting out of LEA or we have an evening protein snack. And that does not interfere with sleep. Mike Wornsby from Southern Florida has done a lot of research.
Research on what kinds of things can you have before sleep that's not going to interfere with the sleep architecture. So we look at cottage cheese or yogurt or casein before bed, and that attenuates that hypoglycemia, and then they get into the deep reparative sleep. So once we get the sleep nailed, then it feeds forward to dropping inflammation, better glucose control, better temperature control, better aspect of fatigue, and recovery from fatigue. So I mean those are the two major things that I'm always honing in on when a female
athlete comes in.
It's like, what's happening? And I'm like, okay, well, first I want to see what your sleep is doing. And then I also want you to take me through the day of how you're eating and how you're training, because there might be a circadian rhythm shift. And then that will complicate sleep as well. Because if we have a circadian rhythm shift, then the melatonin rise that happens about nine o'clock gets blunted. And then that subsequently interrupts sleep.
Dr. Terry (08:30)
So when you mentioned all that stuff to eat at night, I didn't hear the big bowl of ice cream.
stacy (08:35)
Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (08:36)
Yeah.
stacy (08:39)
That's not gonna help sleep.
Dr. Spencer Baron (08:41)
Yeah.
Dr. Terry (08:41)
no, my wife is gonna be so disappointed.
stacy (08:44)
Mm.
Dr. Terry (08:46)
So I do have a y people get so rigid, right? when they work out. They you know, I I have to work out. Spencer's one of these, I have to get up at three thirty and work out at five and but I think men can handle that a little bit better than than women because women they I I'll hear I have to work out this time and what hap you know, sometimes these trainers or don't know how to work out, you know, cause
Would a good question be what's your temperature, what's your HOV and today, today was gonna be a hard day, but based off this, we're gonna go easy today and you're y this would be a better day to train. Train around the menstrual cycle, training around that temperature. Is these good questions that happen that people have a specific time when they have to work out?
stacy (09:29)
It is a great question.
Because a lot of us are time pressed anyway, so we get into the routine like, I'm gonna go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday at this time and Tuesday and Thursday I'm gonna get up and do that and it we're very rigid in that structure. so I always go with the mental and physical RPE. So I tell women and men too, when you wake up, what is your rating perceived exertion scale one to ten physically? So physically you might be a six. How are you mentally one to ten? And you might in
Up being only a two. But if you get up and you start moving and that starts to rise a little bit, and then you get to the gym and you do a couple of warm-up sets, and then all of a sudden physically you feel like an eight and mentally you're six. Go for it. Do your normal thing. But if it doesn't increase and you still feel really fatigued, central nervous system is really kind of not firing, then make it a technique day, make it a mobility day. You're still keeping the consistency, but you're not overloading and overstressing. And I don't think the fitness
industry has given people permission to do that. It's always about go hard, you're doing this, get a sweat fest, you go to the gym, you come out bulletproof, and it's all this more aggressiveness instead of like, let's be a little bit more intuitive, because if you're always trying to push shit uphill, you are not ever going to adapt to get fitter.
Dr. Spencer Baron (10:52)
Hm.
Could could the exact same work out for a woman that you know, feels good one week and then excessive stress kind of parlaying into what you had just shared, but even when her fitness hasn't changed, they could have an emotional response that it's excessive stress.
stacy (11:13)
Yes, and it feels harder.
happened to me today. We ended up moved here and there's a hike down the road, we drop our daughter off and we go up. It's Mount Sinitas and I've had a couple of really hard, stressful days and I felt like I was trying to walk through mud. Where last week I like up the hill, bleep bleep, no problem at all. And so I was like, What is going on? It's like I've been so tired and stressed since a business trip last week and I haven't really like had time to pff calm down from it. I was like, I know what it is.
just like really stressed. So I know it's not fitness, but it's the accumulation of stress.
Dr. Spencer Baron (11:54)
Great. When you go uphill, does it make that noise? Yeah,
I was just I was just wondering
stacy (11:58)
It does. In my brain. Yeah.
It makes that noise in conjunction some really like retro drum and bass music.
Dr. Terry (12:07)
That's
that's awesome.
Dr. Spencer Baron (12:11)
There you go. I love it. All
right. Here here's one for every patient and coach. When a when a when a female suddenly loses motivation, becomes kind of irritable, less confident, uncoordinated, or just doesn't look herself, how do we know whether we're seeing an attitude problem or a brain and body signaling underfueling, poor recovery, hormonal disruption, iron deficiency, or even or even just too much training?
stacy (12:39)
I would definitely put it in the physical. Like a lot of the times when we're looking at all the irritability, the depression and the short temperature or short short temper, it comes from the fact of there's this override of the central nervous system through high stress. And is it high stress because you're not fueling adequately? Mm for the most part I'd say most recreationally active women are not fueling appropriately. 'Cause we are now back in the whole skinny is cool mindset, which that could be a whole
and then we also have the rush, like I wanna get this done, I gotta get this done, and I immediately have to get back to what I'm supposed to be doing and the timeline pressures. And all of that also doesn't allow people to absorb and kind of sit and have a central nervous system reset. So we see all this all the time. If you're you're if you're waking up and you're dead in fatigue and you do some stretching and some mindfulness or some breathing exercises, and then all of a sudden you're like, I can do this, then that's an indication that you're highly stressed.
And we need to like look at how we're going to reset the central nervous system. and then if we start looking at depression and that over exuding like three PM I need to sleep, that's another indication of under recovery and undernutrition. if someone has had a really hard emotional bout then the irritability and depression probably is coming from that emotional
aspect. So it could be you know, something that's happened at work, miss of a promotion or a project deadline, or maybe there's a death in the family, like something that's very emotionally charged, that that's going to contribute to depression, anxiety, rage, irritability. But a lot of the times we bring it back to the physical and the bubble that women are in and the expectations that are put on them as an active woman in a fitness in the fitness world.
had this conversation yesterday where you look at the different pockets, it's like what does it mean to be a woman growing up in a strong body now versus back in the eighties and nineties? There was no such thing as growing up in a strong body in the eighties and nineties.
So that culture shift has been recent, but the mentality of trying to say skinny or quote, just get toned, which we know is not a real word, is still very inherent. And I see that play out in a lot of forty onwards women where they're trying to maintain a certain physique and they don't really realize why they are training, but they feel like they have to ascribe to these certain cultural conventions of you go to a boot camp or a lifting class and you need to come out super sweaty and complete
Wasted because that means you had a good workout. But when you're growing up in the strong body mentality, you know you go in and you have a really heavy lift session, you come out feeling great, but you don't feel sweaty and exhausted and that means it was a really good training session. So we have these mental shifts that are occurring at the same time. We're trying to unpack why these things are going on for women, why we are under recovered, why we're not eating enough.
why we're trying to maintain ourselves in this confined of a of a cultural structure that started way, way before any of us were even in the fitness world.
Dr. Spencer Baron (15:52)
You know, I wanna ask you about something about hormonal disruption, 'cause now we're hearing about more not just medications, but you know, things like sunscreen or moisturizer that have chemicals in them that people are using that are causing hormonal disruptions, not just the in the female, but you know, obviously the males as well. Have you been having conversations about that as well? Certain things that people are eating or putting on their skin?
stacy (16:21)
Yeah, the endocrine disruptors. So really
Dr. Spencer Baron (16:23)
Yeah.
stacy (16:23)
trying to get people to understand that the more ingredients that are in something, the more it can be absorbed through the skin. And if it's absorbed through the skin, it goes in systemic systemically. I mean, this is why we have transdermal medicines, right? Because it goes through the skin, it gets absorbed systemically. so this is why you're seeing a lot of paraben free cosmetics. You're seeing just like really minimalistic n quote natural products that are coming
the market and it is an answer to these endocrine disruptors. The same with food. The more ultra processed the food is, the less your body's going to recognize it and can cause some disruptions. And microplastics and using a reusable plastic bottle now let's go to you know, like a a metal or or another kind of of container that doesn't have the plastics in it. Because there's so much research coming out now that part of the global uprise of infertility are all these endocrine disruptors.
Dr. Spencer Baron (17:24)
So you you started to mention before some signs. I would love to just really clearly express that to our audience. You know, you got a female athlete that's setting all these personal records and winning and looking incredibly fit and physiologically she's unrav unraveling underneath. But could you describe some of the signs? Not
some th that are that somebody could be sensitive to, not that they're watching or or ordering or telling them, but something that they're intuitively feeling.
stacy (17:59)
I think two of the biggest markers that women have not been told to lean into. One I mean, just being intuitive is w is one of the biggest things, but
It all comes back to how you feel. So you might be hitting all your peak performance, but do you have an appetite? Most often no, because the harder you train and the more inflammation you drive, the more you have appetite hormone disruption. And so you don't feel hungry. You also don't feel thirsty. And these are are part of the problem of why so many higher end athletes get into this low energy availability because their training goes up. They don't correspond to eat more for that training.
training, then they get the appetite disruption and a muta mu a mute of the thirst, so then they're not actively looking to eat or to drink, which compounds com compounds the factor of low energy availability.
And then it's a lot of people go, I go to bed by eight thirty, I crash out by eight thirty or nine and then I c keep sleeping. And if you get to the point where you're crashing out and you never feel recovered when you wake up, then we know that your body is just on the cusp of what we used to say over trained, but now we say under recovered.
Dr. Terry (19:21)
Hmm. Hmm.
Dr. Spencer Baron (19:24)
Change it up.
Dr. Terry (19:24)
Do you find
that we had a we had a guy on, do you find that women were always I mean, I was always raised with women's intuition. Women all y'all never question when a woman says, I feel and my wife is like that, you know, she'll I fe I feel like something's around the corner and you come around the corner and there's something around the corner, but so do you feel that women are starting to be less intuitive and they're starting to l listen to the internet, listen to their smartwatch and sort of listening to their inner body and they're not
do you see this becoming a problem and how do you get back to listening to their intuition?
stacy (19:58)
It's become such a problem that there's a movement called intuitive eating and intuitive sleeping.
because it's trying to retrain people how to listen to their body, to understand what it means to be fed, what it understand what it means to be hungry, what it means to sleep well, because we've been bombarded with so much data that hasn't really been interpreted properly. and I know that most people understand that I have a big issue with artificial intelligence and the insights that are happening for women. but we've been bombarded with all of this data
and it i it's lost the ability to have the human in the loop. So we have to retrain the human to take control and say, hey, what does it feel like at three o'clock? If you've had X, Y, Z to eat prior to, how do you feel at three? Do you have energy? Do you feel tired? Do you feel like you need to go get a breath of fresh air and then you'll be energized? Like what's going on? because we see that that's a critical point where we start to have a changeover of cortisol. And if you have a blunt
of your cortisol responses and it directly interferes with how you feel in the afternoon. So this is one of the first things that we do to reteach people what it means to feel hungry or full because if we're energized throughout the day through adequate nutrition, it also helps with our cortisol responses. So we don't have the walling or the super tired I need caffeine at three or four in the afternoon. and it's really interesting that after a couple of weeks women are like, hey, I've got this. I don't have that dip anymore.
because now I know what it means to eat and be nourished to have the energy rather than to hold my food intake because I'm super busy or I've been told to fast or whatever it is and then I have a very short eating window and then I overeat or I don't have time to adequately get all the nutrition and then about five
I'm starving and tired, and then I get home and eat so much before dinner, and then I don't have a real meal, and then about eight or nine o'clock I'm hungry again, so I'm snacking before bed. So, you know, it just is a cascading effect. And once we start to nail that food intake and get rid of that afternoon slump, and then women are like, I get it now. And a lot of times I'll tell women, let's put your wearable away for two weeks. I really want you to understand and listen to your body's cues, and then they start.
to get into a normal circadian rhythm that works and then they're like, I don't need to lean into my wearable. and it's it's pretty powerful when you start to see this.
Dr. Terry (22:35)
So do you find a wait, do you find a difference between the women that are in their sixties and seventies that grew up with their intuition and have learned the wearables and like it versus the twenty year old who's never has grown up with wearables and technology and doesn't know the other side?
stacy (22:52)
There is a difference for sure. So women who have embraced technology later and they still have doubt in their wearable, they hold on to that doubt. They're like, I'm not in the red, I feel great. I'm gonna go do whatever. I'm not listening to you. I'm not gonna close my loop for steps. You don't know what else I've done. You didn't record it well.
But younger generation who's grown up with technology, they're like, my god, it says I'm in the red, I better not do anything and walking around at nine o'clock at night 'cause I need to close my my Apple loop, right? So they're just so entrenched in what the data tells them, not realizing that these algorithms are very, very rough and it's based on male physiology. And we know that there's a beat to beat difference for women versus men, especially when looking at the QRS.
And that's what's registered in the algorithm for heart rate variability. And then it also depends on what wearable you're using because a recovery score can be weighted differently between an aura and a whoop and a garmin, depending on what wearable it is. You could have three or four different wearables and it'll give you a different recovery score in the morning.
So there's so many different nuances within these algorithms that are not being explained or shown to the public. So that's why I'm like so many people are leaning into the supposed objective data that isn't accurately representing their bodies.
Dr. Spencer Baron (24:12)
You I wanted to ask you 'cause you mentioned earlier about your issue with data and you know, th a lot of women our patients are coming in. It used to be Dr. Google. you're playing Doctor Google today? Now it's I asked Chad and or Claude, so go there, please. Tell us how you really feel.
stacy (24:33)
Okay. How I really feel.
Dr. Terry (24:34)
Wait, wait,
d wait, did you get your espresso shot first?
stacy (24:39)
no I have not. Which is probably good. So
Dr. Spencer Baron (24:42)
Yeah, 'cause she could go off on this right now.
stacy (24:45)
Right. I will say how frustrated I am that we have
a new company startup that just closed funding to address this particular issue. And I say that because we have a new women's intelligence platform where it's myself and a collection of twenty other top academics that have vetted all the research that has come in to drive the platform. And it is true research done on female physiology. We've looked at the methods, we've looked at the power, we've looked at the themes, if it if it's been a mixed
Or not, so we have an entire rubric that excludes all the poor data.
Dr. Terry (25:27)
Mm.
stacy (25:27)
And as I've been testing our chat and our output, I go into something like Claude or Chat GTP and I'll put the same question across. And this is one that I was laughing about. I had read somewhere and someone asked me a question about caffeine and and not having caffeine within 90 minutes of waking up.
How can you have protein coffee when you're not supposed to have caffeine within 90 minutes? I'm like, that's not true. So I go into all hours, it's falling on the research. They're like, there's no research to validate this. I don't know, you know. So then it goes into what cortisol does and the appetite hormones, and you can go down the rabbit hole. Put it into Claude and it goes, Yes, this is absolutely true. And I put in, No, this is incorrect. Comes back with, you are right, this is incorrect. It was started by a podcast by Andrew Huberman.
So then I go into chat and I say, you know, ninety minutes caffeine or ninety minutes upon waking, no caffeine. Is this true? And it says, Yes, it's absolutely true. And I said, No, it's incorrect. And so and start arguing with me, No, it is correct. No, it is correct. It's like, my gosh. The human in the loop needs to be there and that's what we've done because the misinformation of AI is just driving this echo chamber of misinformation. It pulls up anything from anywhere and brings it into
what it's gonna regurgitate and it learns from that misinformation. And we also know from a report that the UN released three weeks ago that because there's only around thirty percent of women in the whole AI industry, that there is an increase in male bias misogyny and having the projection that women should be like in the home and not out working. So if you go in and you try to put an image of you put in a description of a
a career woman. It'll come up as a nurse or a secretary or a woman with a lot of kids and you put in career man it comes out with the business and the lab coat and all the projected stereotypes. And the UN is like, we've got to stop this 'cause it's perpetuating violence against women. So if we're thinking about the everyday person that's going to lean into AI with all this other stuff around it, it's a quagmire of misinformation. And
I'll stop on my rant there because that's enough for people to sit back and go, What?
Dr. Spencer Baron (27:48)
That is beautiful. my gosh.
Dr. Terry (27:50)
Is is the woman
i i is the woman that's being produced, is she at least barefoot when she's in the kitchen?
okay.
stacy (27:56)
I don't know, I've only seen from the waist up. But maybe
maybe we should go in later and say a head to toe picture of a career woman and see what it comes out with.
Dr. Terry (28:06)
Yeah they
And then a big slap comes across my face.
stacy (28:13)
Maybe, maybe not.
Dr. Terry (28:16)
That's fascinating.
Dr. Spencer Baron (28:15)
Actually it's funny, just this
yeah, just this morning
stacy (28:18)
Yeah. And the other worrying thing
that I've seen is there's a advertisement circulating about chat GTP and it and it's like an old woman who's isolated living by herself and it's like, You're not really alone, you can chat with me. I'm like, that is not getting rid of social isolation. I'm sorry, that is not, because it is a misinformation chat bot that someone is interplaying with and it the
then they lean into it as a friend and it's not. It's not part of getting rid of that social isolation. So there's a lot of more interesting and yet scary aspects that a lot of people aren't overtly aware of but is happening.
Dr. Terry (29:00)
We had a guest that Spencer remembered us that said the most things they're searched on Chat GPT are mental health, which is scary.
stacy (29:08)
Yeah. 'Cause then they're like, it's my therapist. It learns me, it knows who I am, but it's not a therapist and it's not leaning into the right information and it doesn't know you. It's just reflecting what you've put into it.
Dr. Terry (29:21)
Mm.
Dr. Spencer Baron (29:22)
Actually just this morning Karen said to me that she asked Chat what would you like as a human name instead of chat? And it came back, Well you can call and the dialogue was like like one of her buddies, you know. Well you can call me Alex and I go, Boy, is that gender neutral? Alex? Alex could be
stacy (29:41)
Yeah, I know.
Dr. Spencer Baron (29:42)
a woman or I could be man? I go she goes, Why don't you do it? And I go, No, I'll get back. Call me Pat. Pat is a guy
Dr. Terry (29:48)
I was just gonna say Pat. I was
just gonna say that. Hey, right. Yes.
stacy (29:52)
S Saturday Night Live comes into mind.
Dr. Spencer Baron (29:54)
Yes, yes!
Dr. Terry (29:57)
I was as soon as you said Alex, I was thinking Saturday Live and Pat.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:00)
That's exactly where I I yeah. Yeah. Was
stacy (30:04)
Yes.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:05)
that was was Pat Jim really Jim Carrey? 'Cause I
Dr. Terry (30:07)
Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:07)
was trying to remember. Was that who who was yeah, was that
stacy (30:09)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:11)
That was great. I just broke out in a sweat. Okay. So let me Alright,
Dr. Terry (30:12)
It's so good.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:19)
moving right along. L let's put let's put everything together here. All right, tomorrow morning.
woman wakes up and has to make one decision. Do I push, do I modify, or just plain old recover? So before she looks at her watch or follows her you know, training plan, give us five signals from her own body that she should check and which one she should never ignore.
stacy (30:48)
Heart rate because if you wake up and you have a faster than normal heart rate, then that's an indication that you have not slept well and not recovered. We also think about thirst. A lot of women don't feel thirsty in the morning, but as soon as you start to drink water then you will start to feel thirsty and that lets your appetite hormones and everything kind of requeue.
and then when you wake up and you have a stretch and you put your head outside and find your energy levels. Like if y like for me I know until I have my espresso I'm gonna be a bit flat. But if I have my espresso and then I start to feel normal, I'm like good to go. But if I have it and I don't feel normal, like today, then I know it's gonna be one where I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna have a struggle fest if I try to go hard or I better back off.
so it's some of those those little things that only you know. So that like coffee's not gonna affect everyone like it does me. So that's my tell. But for a general woman who's looking at heart rate, is it faster than normal? How do you feel when you woke up? Did you wake up before your alarm because you could or were you like fighting the alarm and hitting snooze and you just didn't want to get up? are you thirsty or not? Drink water, you know, just to try to cue things in.
how do your muscles feel? Do you feel sore and heavy or do you feel like, yeah, I can go? so those are some of the top tells. And then the other one is make sure you have some food. 'Cause as soon as you have a little bit of fuel then everything kicks into gear. So if you're like mentally, no, I don't want to do this and you have a little bit of food and you start feeling better, like, yeah, okay, maybe I was just low on food. so those are some of the the critical non wearable things that
or kind of your your checklist of health when you first wake up.
Dr. Terry (32:40)
right, I got something. Yeah. Yeah,
Dr. Spencer Baron (32:40)
Terry, you gonna ask something, yeah, sorry.
Dr. Terry (32:42)
you just recently moved from New Zealand to the States. You know, you're on podcast, you're talking to people all day a lot, but what have you no what do you notice between the mentality of women and and people from Europe, from the islands, fr and to the States? What are some common threads and what do you think we can learn from them and they can learn from us?
stacy (33:07)
I think the pace of life is completely different.
'Cause we look at like what's happening in New Zealand, Australia, Pacifica, even UK, everyone's productive, but it's not this crazy like go go go twenty four seven that we have in the States. one of the reasons that my daughter was excited to move here is because she could have Amazon in three hours. Like that doesn't happen anywhere else, right? Shopping, twenty four hour shopping, because it's just this go, go, go, go, go and there's no that there's no indication of fallibility.
And it's okay to take a pause. But you have have have to have bubbles that you surround yourself to say it's okay to take a pause 'cause the general scope here in the States is go twenty four seven. and it took a long time for me to unwind from that mentality 'cause we went from Silicon Valley over to New Zealand. And Silicon Valley is like to the nth degree of twenty four seven.
N and you know, I laugh at that, I get frustrated that there isn't anything open past four on a Saturday for the most part in New Zealand. But when you think about it, you're like, Well that's because they have a life and they don't necessarily want to be open till nine PM. Late night shopping on a Thursday goes only to nine PM, whereas most of the shops here and in Europe are open till late. And then we look at Europe and they have the culture of eating really good food. we met some Italian friends last night and it was really
good simple food and there was no ultra processed, it was all handmade, it was relatively quick. But you think about it, it's like when you think think of the cultures that as Americans we think have it dialed in, it's because there are pockets of things that have been kind of ingrown in their unique culture of simple, tasty food, things that we can identify. We know where it comes from. There are no feedlots.
we look at the community aspect.
where there's this huge upsurge of social isolation and particularly in the states and areas that are really wanting to be like the US. So we see like the teens across the world are all suffering from the same mental anguish and mental depression and the fear of being alone because they're looking at social media, which is really a huge representation of what's happening primarily in the US.
So when we start talking about how different people are approaching training, how people are approaching recovery, you do have a cultural nuance depending on where you are and what surrounds you that allows you to take the pause. In the States, you have to carve out the time and be okay with taking that pause and push back against that go, go, go, go, go. In Europe, it's not that hard to push back because it's already inherent there. We think about
the siestas that happen in Spain. We think about the entire month of August that everyone takes off in Europe. In New Zealand, everything shuts down for three to four weeks over December, January because you're taking a Christmas vacation. That wouldn't happen here. So it's how the culture wraps people that will indicate how people will react to how they are supposed to be doing things in their life.
Dr. Terry (36:27)
Hmm.
Dr. Spencer Baron (36:27)
What what is the attitude in where where you lived and and overseas like that, the towards you know, iPads and you know, all the electronics that they that kids are entertained by. So a parent would just hand the kid, you know, the iPhone and they get just mesmerized 'cause they're finding now that it's really atrophying the myelin or not allowing the myelin or
to to to grow normally. that was a study that I was recently privy to that blew me away. What's the attitude in other parts of the country like that? And for real.
stacy (37:05)
Same problems we have here. But this week
New Zealand followed Australia and banned social media for sixteen and younger.
Dr. Spencer Baron (37:14)
Yeah.
stacy (37:15)
so by the nature of being a smaller
Dr. Terry (37:17)
How how did they d how did they do that?
stacy (37:20)
that's what has to be worked out. But what happened in Australia is they access
because they can trace it and you have to like have permissions and stuff that just always loopholes around it. But then it was also of movement because like here we have the movement towards brick phones or or like in San Francisco there are different bars and and clubs that are having tech free nights. And so like the tech industry, kids are com I call them kids, but their twenty year olds are coming and playing card games and having social interaction like we used to do, right? Before technology. So there are movements to get away from it.
So when we're looking at banning social media for sixteen and under, for the most part
Dr. Terry (37:59)
Mm.
stacy (37:59)
it's it it seems like, Well, how are you gonna do that? But there's that undercurrent of movement. Now I have the excuse 'cause I'm the meme mom who's like no Snapchat, no social media and now I can lean into the government saying, Well, you can't have it 'cause you're not sixteen or older
so it kind of helps the parents who are trying to find a leg up to get the kids away from it. So it's just a helping hand to be able to stop and the schools have also banned phones. Like you cannot have a phone even in your bag to use on breaks in in New Zealand. It's like you have to turn the phone in and you can get it at the end of the day, but you cannot use it at all on any of the campuses anywhere because of this whole like bullying aspect that happens on Snap or checking social media.
media and the waves of of emotion that come with it and it also reduces the aspect of we're here and you're not, let's send messages around and create that FOMO because you're not part of our group. So they're really trying to lean in to eliminate that, to reduce the angst and the social anxiety that comes with social media. But you don't see that happening here in the States. There are pockets, but not in a big way.
Dr. Spencer Baron (39:12)
Do you
suggest anything as a way to enhance I mean the you know capacity that the brain and its maturation can how you can suggest any ways to evolve that like with exercise or brain training or you know I have a buddy of mine who's a functional neurologist who he has all sorts of cool ways. Do you have anything that's specific for women that they could start tomorrow or for young young
Yeah.
stacy (39:44)
Yeah, I'm gonna lean into strength training because there's so much research still that's coming out. I gave a talk at my daughter's school like two nights before we moved and it was over four hundred people that came 'cause they wanted to know about keeping girls in sport.
and part of it is like, well, how do we start? Because we are still leaning into the baseline of of boys and how we coach boys. It's like, well, we have to create a better environment. We know that girls are not motivated by being yelled at and singled out.
Boys are. So we have more of a group collaboration. And if there's as a coach, there's something wrong that you want to point out, you don't yell out that athlete's name. You just yell out what you want people to correct. So it's not directed to someone. And if we're looking at at how do we create more body efficacy for girls because maturation is so different across the years, then we look at leaning into strength training. And what does that mean? That doesn't necessarily mean
Let's look at developing posterior chain. Let's look at developing balance, uniplanar movement, let's look at that functionality because the biomechanics of our girls change completely at at puberty. We have the widening of the hips and the shoulders, lengthening of the arms and legs before we have core strength. So addressing all those issues makes a girl f have more body confidence, which then lets her feel like she can participate more in sport.
And the best way to address that is through resistance training and strength training. And not only that, we see it helps build bone, which peaks towards the end of our teenage, early twenties, and we're seeing a higher incidence of early onset osteopenia in our early thirties because people haven't had any capacity to build peak bone mass.
So if we're leaning into strength training and we're doing multi-directional stress and we might be doing some plometrics to improve the type two, all of that leans forward to better body composition, better self-awareness and proprioception, better body confidence, having the capacity to feel at home in the sport that they love or new sport that they want to try. And then if you have a coaching staff that embraces that and creates a positive sporting environment.
it feeds forward to keeping our girls active and in sport.
And even if it isn't a organized sport, just opening up a weight room in a in a high school so it's not just so boy oriented. So maybe you have practice times that are just for the boys and maybe you have some that are just for the girls because it's still very intimidating for young girls to come into a weight room even if it's at a high school, because it's still so bro oriented. So there's lots of different touch points that we have to have to really break that baseline and say
Hey, this is how we know it works for boys. We've seen it work really well. But we have a global epidemic of girls dropping out of sport. And it isn't because they get their period. Yes, that could be a factor. But it's all these other biomechanical and emotional and mental challenges that no one's telling them how to navigate. And so they just think that I'm not good enough, so they drop out. Or they don't feel like they can manage the sport because they feel ungangly.
But if we take that time to retrain the body how to run, how to jump, how to throw, how to move properly, it encourages all of that positive self awareness, that positive efficacy, the friendships that come, the camaraderie that comes with all the movement. And that's why w we three probably go to the gym 'cause it's like the adult playground. You get to see your friends and that's what we want for our girls. And then it leans forward into
how the body composition is better for the twenties, the thirties, the forties onwards. And we see also that team sport is a way that girls can learn time management and and leadership and teammanship. So that leans into better aspects for when they get into the working world. We see that most women who are in a C suite have had some kind of sports team sports background because it
all starts
early. So it's really, really important that we address human in the loop, girl side of things, to retrain their bodies differently because their bodies are changing differently than what we see with our boys.
Dr. Spencer Baron (44:23)
the comment you made about team sports and how important that was. I read a study that was really fascinating on how the if if if before a t I think fif up to fifteen years old or up to if you're forced to or you're playing a sport in high school, what they did was they followed those children that went on after they're eighteen where they can make their own decisions about a sport. If they continued in a team sport, they mapped them out till
followed them till they're in their elder you know elder ages and found that those were more successful the ones that continued in a teamwork environment on their own. And it was pretty cool. So let that be known.
stacy (45:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (45:09)
do you you you mentioned strength training, but what about like grappling I see a lot of women getting involved in in boxing, Tai Chi, jujitsu and do you have any suggestions there?
stacy (45:23)
great for appropriate reception, agility, all the things that we tend to lose rapidly, especially when we become more sedentary in our job. So it's great. I think the problem that we have in the fitness industry is we tend to gravitate to the one thing we love and we don't think that we should be doing other things. Like I know the Pilates crew out there thinks that I hate Pilates. I'm like, I don't hate Pilates. But it's not true strength training that we want, right?
Dr. Spencer Baron (45:46)
That's all they do. Yeah.
stacy (45:48)
It's really good for isometric, it's good for balance, proprioception
and some isometric strength, but it's not the same as lifting heavy. And lifting heavy isn't going to give you the appropriate reception and the agility that something like Pilates and yoga will. And we know that yoga and Pilates also improves our ligament and tendon health because of the isometric holds. So they work together. So if we're thinking about grappling and jiu-jitsu and tai Chi and all of the other kind of mixed martial arts, we also have to lean into we need some strength training in there. Maybe we need to be out in nature because being out
in nature is so powerful for reducing overall stress.
There's so much research coming out showing that when you take a walk or run in nature, it does so much more for your mental and physical health than trying to run or walk on a treadmill. Maybe we take grappling outside. Put the mask outside on the green field, right? So then you have some outside space. But we can't keep in this whole mentality of all or nothing. We have to look at this is my primary and how do I benefit my primary by doing all these other things on the outside. And we don't have to lean in fully
To be a full strength training athlete. We need to do enough to reduce injury risk and to make sure that all of our stabilizers are strong. I need to be outside in nature, especially green space, as much as I can, but not to the point where it takes away from my primary love of whatever sport I'm doing. And I think that's the problem that we have in the fitness and health space is that we tend to say women in sport, women in fitness, but not looking across the lifespan. We have girls.
Who are going through puberty. We have girls who have menstrual cycle dysfunction. We have women who have menstrual cycle dysfunction. So we have the reproductive years. And what does that look like? Then we have pregnancy, perhaps. Then we also have perimenopause, postmenopause, and each one of those requires a different lens to see how to maximize sleep performance nutrition. But for men, it's like you go from boy, teenager into manhood, and it's more linear. And unfortunately, that's how we've all been
conditioned.
To
think for both sexes. So if we talk about what it means from a sport perspective as well, we still have that linear mindset of you want to be a triathlete, it's swim, bike, run, and maybe a little bit of strength training on the off off season. You want to be a great track runner? Yeah, well, we have to also be in the gym doing Olympic lifts. But there's no conversation of some nice long, slow runs in the trails that's going to help with mental capacity. So we have to really break out of that all or nothing mindset.
to improve athletes regardless of of sex or gender.
Dr. Spencer Baron (48:31)
Can you continue on that same conversation about cross training? 'Cause you know, you got we get these kids, Dr. Terry and I get these kids that come in that they are perennial baseball pitchers or perennially playing tennis and you know, you ask them how many how many days do you you practice? And they go, five days a week, and they go, Well, what do you do on the weekends? we have competition. So we had a patient that was a junior Olympic hopeful in s in the I think it was
the breast stroke. And then the mom was smart enough to go, you really should cross train. They put her in flag football, she blew her ACL out on the first. Yeah. Yeah. So sh and she couldn't she couldn't compete in the Junior Olympics in her eleventh grade year. So can you imagine? Any thoughts or suggestions on when you do choose cross training how that how that
stacy (49:24)
What it means.
Dr. Spencer Baron (49:25)
might might look for safety reasons?
stacy (49:27)
Yeah. Well I was like
I thought you were gonna say that she got into the into the weight room and started developing some of her stabilizers and then went and won, not started flag football and
Dr. Terry (49:36)
Yeah.
stacy (49:37)
blew her ACL. yeah, so when we
Dr. Spencer Baron (49:39)
Wouldn't that have been nice, yeah.
stacy (49:40)
talk about cross training it's like like I said, it's like here's your primary and your major goal. So what's gonna complement it? Where flag football's really not gonna complement breaststroke.
yeah, completely different movements and your body's still learning and we know there's a massive incident of ACL terror in our pretty much eleven to fifteen year olds and people are like, Why is it happening? And I was at the epicenter for global women's sports summit in Portland last week and part of it they were asking why are these ACL injuries happening? I'm like, have you looked from the ground up? Like, what do you mean? And
one, they're still doing quad strengthening like no, because if you have really strong quads and we know that women have weak posterior, as soon as they go to decelerate, pushes the knee forward and boom, ACL, right? Pivot with the knee forward. So let's look at posterior chain, but then also look at the shoes. Like how are you looking at cleat placement on the shoes? Are they just shrinking pink shoes that a company has come and and scan the foot and then it's like okay, we'll just make the shoe smaller, but this is the same cleat placement.
And we know from the research that we need a different cleat placement and a soccer and a rugby boot because of the way that the gate and the center of gravity is different in women versus men. And the way they stop and pivot is different between women versus men. And that without looking at that, that contributes to ACL. So like with flag football, I'm like, she probably wasn't very strong posterior, she didn't have the right kind of shoes on, she pivoted and pheom, there goes the ACL. So when we again go back to cross training.
there's a lot of conversation about concurrent training. If I'm an aerobic or an anaerobic athlete, should I be doing strength training and in what order? There really is no difference. As you get older, sure. We want to lean into strength training first because that's what we want. We want to be able to build and maintain muscle. But when we're younger there really isn't an interference. So it's like use the strength training. Maybe it isn't being in a gym. Maybe it's on the playground.
and you're doing pull ups and monkey bars and you're balancing and you're doing seesaw and maybe you're doing the cargo net for agility. That's all resistance training because it's challenging different stabilizing muscles that's going to enhance what you're already doing. So there's lots of ways to think about what is cross training, but it's not a completely different sport that's organized and structured because our kids don't need that. I had that conversation with one of the commissioners at the at the summit
And 'cause my daughter plays soccer and I was like, Yeah, but it's getting too much 'cause she was playing for high school and a club and it's like, No, we're pulling you because you don't need to be doing that much. You're not getting enough sleep. Every weekend is early and you're not even on the traveling team. And they have all acknowledged and the commissioners have all acknowledged that the way that youth sport is in the States has got to change.
Dr. Spencer Baron (52:35)
We had Holly Silver's Grinnelli on talking about ACL terrorist. Sh that woman is brilliant when it comes down. She has a list of eleven exercises that I've been handing to my patients that do volleyball, soccer, pr I mean, th they do so much of it and I'm so worried about their them blowing out their knees 'cause it's become so popular, you know. Yeah. Anyway, s it is.
I hey, I'm ready for the rapid fire questions. if you're ready, we got we got yeah, yeah. We we got we got
Dr. Terry (53:07)
let her hair down. Look at that.
stacy (53:09)
Let's go. Pull my hair up. Let's go.
Dr. Spencer Baron (53:16)
five of them as you remember from before. Mm and they're going deep. You ready? Question number one. You once wanted to be an army ranger or a navy SEAL?
If Stacy Simms had never become a scientist, what do you think you'd be doing today?
stacy (53:36)
I would be a barista and a florist, but I would not own the cafe.
Dr. Terry (53:42)
That's so opposite Navy SEAL.
stacy (53:42)
Flowers and caffeine. Happy
Dr. Spencer Baron (53:45)
that come from? How what what
was that? Yeah, the florist. Really? You
stacy (53:48)
Where did it come from? Because, yeah, part
of the the joy that I get from the stuff that I do is helping people. And I've had quite a few women in the past week come up and say that I've changed their lives because they've altered training and nutrition. And it's like i and they're so happy and across the years and like the thing that I love the most is bringing happiness to people because there's lack of empathy and happiness in the world.
Flowers bring happiness in any situation, caffeine always makes people happy. Especially if it's good. So if you combine them
Dr. Spencer Baron (54:21)
That's right.
stacy (54:22)
and you don't have the stress of being the owner and you're just the chatty barista and florist, it's great. And then you can go to the flower markets and pick out all the beautiful flowers and make arrangements which makes you happy. It's a feed forward. So it's perfect.
Dr. Terry (54:37)
Look at that.
Dr. Spencer Baron (54:37)
Do you remember that movie
of the guy that worked on I think it was Wall Street or something like that and he ended up giving up that mega million dollar job?
And delivered flowers because of the same reason. There's a movie there was a movie many, many years ago on that. I'll see if I can find it for you. You'll like it. You you'll relate to it. Question number two.
stacy (54:55)
Yeah, let me know. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (54:58)
All right, you've spent your entire career teaching women to listen to their physiology. What has your own body taught you lately that Stacey Sims, the scientist, didn't want to hear?
stacy (55:15)
that age catches up with everybody.
Dr. Spencer Baron (55:19)
There you go.
stacy (55:19)
And if you're not
careful, you will have chronic injuries, especially soft tissue injuries, that take forever to go away. so as my husband said, In your new book, do you have a section in there that talks about changing the mental attitude of a competitive athlete into someone who is just training for life? I was like, Yes, and I'm using myself as an example, but I still haven't gotten there yet.
Dr. Spencer Baron (55:44)
Yeah?
Alright. Fair enough. We're working. We're we're ready for
stacy (55:50)
Work in progress.
Dr. Spencer Baron (55:51)
yeah, work in progress. Question number three. You've called yourself an introverted extrovert. Hmm. And now you have more than a million people following your work when nobody needs anything from s Dr. Stacy Sims, what does Stacy do that makes her ridiculously happy?
stacy (56:11)
Remember that comment I made at the beginning of the day about drum based music?
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:17)
Yeah,
yeah. Yes. That's it, huh?
stacy (56:19)
So
I'll turn on SoundCloud and put on drum and bass and go on a bike ride out in the gravel or go for a walk or I will sit in the car with it really loud and no one
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:35)
Ha ha ha
Dr. Terry (56:36)
I love that.
and I love d
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:39)
Great.
Dr. Terry (56:40)
love a good drum beat. That's so cool.
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:43)
You know, it's funny, who who
stacy (56:44)
There you go.
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:45)
who who was the person that that my gosh, that Stacy referred us to that sh she's also a professor of reject but she she confessed that Abby
Dr. Terry (56:55)
Abby Ryan.
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:56)
Ryan Smith, right, that she she goes she loves ra hardcore rap music. Her windows are tinted, they're rolled up and she just jams and nobody knows who's inside who's inside there jamming, right? Okay. Love that.
stacy (57:09)
Exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Terry (57:10)
Yeah, yeah.
stacy (57:12)
Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (57:14)
that's great. Question number four. You lived in New Zealand by the ocean and now you may be trading waves for a landlocked state. So if surfing has to take a back seat, what's the next crazy sport that Stacey Sims is going to learn or finally master?
stacy (57:35)
I wanna say snowboarding, but then that requires me to be cold. So
Dr. Terry (57:41)
But you love cold plunges. I mean, come on.
stacy (57:44)
yeah. So great. So
Dr. Spencer Baron (57:44)
Yeah, that's for like s three minutes. That's about yeah.
Question number five. When your daughter when your daughter is your age and someone asks her who Stacy Simms was, forget the books, the research, followers and women are not small men, what what do you hope that she says about her mama?
stacy (58:08)
that I was a good mom and friend 'cause I try as hard as possible to be as open and non judgmental and allow her just to vent and I try to guide instead of be a you know, a hard nosed no parent until it comes to social media and then I am the woman that has no love for it, especially when it comes to kids.
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:35)
That's great. Isn't that cool? We're we're hearing that more often that what you wanna end up being to your child. So thank you so much, Stacey. You are so great. I appreciate having on our show.
stacy (58:48)
Thanks. Before we go, I have a question for you
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:50)
Yes.
stacy (58:51)
guys. Okay? Cause
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:53)
Ready.
stacy (58:53)
this has been an argument well an argument, a contention point in our house. Snapchat or vaping?
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:02)
That's like would you rather
Dr. Terry (59:03)
Ooh.
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:03)
burn in a fire or drown? What
stacy (59:05)
I know.
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:06)
is it? Snapchat or vape?
Dr. Terry (59:08)
Wow.
I would probably pick Snap, but just put restrictions on it.
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:13)
Yeah. Yeah.
stacy (59:14)
Mm.
Dr. Terry (59:17)
And the only reason that the only reason on that one is is I hear all the stuff on vaping that you can't control
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:22)
Yeah.
Dr. Terry (59:23)
the chemicals. So I would rather put parameters on Snap and not put the chemicals in my in my body.
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:32)
What are your thoughts?
stacy (59:34)
What do you say, Spence?
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:35)
Yeah, I felt the same way. Actually I would you know, w my two boys, we would have we would spend hours going in a car talking about would you rather do this or would you rather do that? What would so that's a tough one. yeah, I agree with Terry on that. The
stacy (59:53)
I say
vaping and I'll explain why. Okay, so I'm sure that you remember something someone said to you when you were little that has stuck with you for your entire life.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:00:07)
I see where this is going, yeah.
stacy (1:00:08)
Snapchat does
that. And it's a mental anguish that you cannot see, but it affects you for a very long period of time.
Whereas vaping comes out as a physical manifestation of an illness. And everyone is aware of a physical manifestation of an illness. So there's treatments for it. We all talk about the chemicals of vaping and how bad it is for you and putting parameters around vape shops and their treatments for lung issues and throat cancers and stuff, but no one is really paying attention to the damage that something like Snapchat can do for the rest of your life. So this came up when my daughter was like
Well if you don't give me Snap, would you rather me vape? And I was like, Yes. And she's like, What? And I said, The mental ramifications of Snapchat are so further reaching than what you really expect that I would rather you have a physical disease that comes from something like vaping. So, there you go.
Dr. Terry (1:01:03)
Wow.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:01:06)
Totally love that answer because that makes more sense than just May I? Alright. I am. I'm I'm
stacy (1:01:09)
You can change your you can change your mind now and come on my side if you want. Yes. Absolutely.
Dr. Terry (1:01:15)
Look at her. Why do I feel like you yeah in your house you get your way 'cause you just kinda let the draw in and then you go, boop.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:01:26)
Yeah.
stacy (1:01:27)
Nope. No, because my husband is very logical, so we have quite a few interesting conversations about it.
Dr. Terry (1:01:33)
That's awesome
though. And that's and that's why I want and
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:01:34)
That is fantastic.
Dr. Terry (1:01:36)
the end the show on you have conversations. You know, as
stacy (1:01:39)
Yes.
Dr. Terry (1:01:39)
long as people talk and have conversations, which is what this show is all about, I think that's what we need more in this world. People need to have conversations.
stacy (1:01:49)
I love it. That's why I love you guys. It's so fun.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:01:52)
thanks, Dace. That was great. Really.
Dr. Terry (1:01:52)
love you too. Stace and I
I just look forward to the next time we we hook up, but thank you so much for everything you bring to the table.
stacy (1:02:00)
You're welcome.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:02:02)
Thanks, Dace.
What if your body warns you that you're overtraining, underfueling, or harmonic struggling before your performance ever drops? And what if most female athletes don't know how to read those signals? Well, Dr. Stacy Sims is back. And we're not talking about why women aren't small men. We've done that already. Today, we want to know how women can actually read their own physiology. Welcome back, Dr. Stacy Sims.
Dr. Terry (00:30)
Woohoo.
Dr. Spencer Baron (00:31)
Yeah.
stacy (00:32)
Danger has
Dr. Spencer Baron (00:36)
that's great. Stace, if if I handed you a female athlete and said, All right, don't look at her performance. Tell me whether her body is actually adapting to training or quietly breaking down, what would you look at first?
stacy (00:52)
I always look at trends over time because there isn't any one thing that's a signal like
If you were to take a male athlete and look at training stress score and look at how that fluctuates, you have a better idea of what's happening. But for women we have to look at like objectively, heart rate variability changes, any menstrual cycle, irregularities or changes, sleep not how long she's sleeping, but how many awakenings are happening over each night. And then we also then have this objective, like how are you feeling and are you feeling dead and fatigue when you wake up or not?
Some of the telling things that we're finding right now, instead of using heart rate variability to look at like systematic stress, which a lot of people are like, you use heart rate variability to see, and as it starts to decline, it means you're not stress resilient. But we find that even when women are starting to reduce their training because they're feeling kind of not so great, but the heart rate variability still drops, it's an early indication that they're iron deficient. Because the the
you
know, the green LEDs or the red LEDs that are on your smart watches that read age heart rate variability, they work by reflecting off hemoglobin. So when hemoglobin starts to drop because you don't have enough iron, then your heart rate variability drops because it's not a a true clear signal. So it gives us that early indication. So when we start seeing you do all these changes, but your heart rate variability is still dropping as trends over time, well now we really want to get an early iron test to see what's going on.
So there are things that we can pull out through the signaling that otherwise gets missed.
Dr. Terry (02:32)
Mm. It's I I love her. So when you
Dr. Spencer Baron (02:36)
Yeah.
Dr. Terry (02:38)
when you got yeah, let's forget cycle sinking. You know, when women's menstrual cycle is treated like a vital sign, what is it actually telling us when it suddenly changes?
stacy (02:50)
So the it's an endocrine disruptor. So when you start to see an overload of stress, either life stress or training stress or a combination of the two, it is creating a a dampening of your HPG axis. So that means that your luteinizing hormone pulse blunts, your estradiol blunts, and so you start seeing a lengthening of the menstrual cycle because the follicular phase or the early phase of the menstrual cycle before you ovulate is all about making the body really robust.
and really immune strong so that you can ovulate and have the best chances of having a fertilized egg survive. So we started to see lengthening of the menstrual cycle because the body's under a lot of stress. And it's like, wait, wait, I can't I can't mature an egg. So let's just keep trying to see h where the stress is going to be. And then the flip side of it is when you start having really short cycles and heavy bleeding, it means there's what we call alluteal phase defect. And that means you have not really ovulated. So you
will still
Have
a bleed phase even though you don't ovulate. And so women get confused because hey, my cycle is really long, and then I had a really short cycle with a heavy bleed. Yeah, that's not normal, so we need to get that checked out. But if we look how long has your cycle extended from your norm, or how has it shortened, it gives us a really good idea of if your body's robust enough to try to ovulate, that's the shorter cycle. But if it's like wait, I'm tapped out and my hormones are dropping, and there's no way I have
the ability to ovulate, that's when we start to see the lengthening. So that's why they're saying it's a vital sign, because it's one of the first indications that your body's not in a good adaptive state.
Dr. Spencer Baron (04:31)
So not to put on birth control pills, right? I want to make that
stacy (04:34)
Exactly, exactly.
Dr. Spencer Baron (04:37)
really clear out there. Go ahead, Terry. Sorry.
Dr. Terry (04:40)
No, that's right. You know, another thing that that I think a lot of women and men don't focus on, they they look at HR V, they look at all this kind of stuff. But we had a guest talk about it, kinda sparked some interest in my my head, body temperature.
And and people don't look at body temperature that cycles throughout the day. We're not ninety eight point six all the time. We'd be dead and that's the temperature of the room. So, you know, you know, based on you you can get the if you know, people that have certain body temperatures are more depressed, some ha are more anxious. But we also sometimes don't train take supplements based on body temperature and it can affect our hydration, it can affect our mental state, recovery. What is something women need to pay attention to when it comes to body temperature?
stacy (05:25)
We know that it fluctuates. Like if you are ovulating and you have progesterone, then your internal temperature goes up. Right before ovulation it drops about a degree because of estrogen's effect. When you stop having that fluctuation, that gives you an indication that you're inovulatory or there's some kind of issue with your hormone flux.
If you end up having a higher baseline temperature because you are metabolically stressed where you're not adapting to training and you're not able to drop inflammation because your body isn't coping, then you're gonna have that higher baseline temperature which interferes with sleep.
So this is why I always turn back to sleep about awakenings and seeing how how many awakening cycles that you have during the night, even though you aren't consciously aware. If you're using a a wearable, it's it's easier to pick up the length of sleep and how many awakenings you are, and that's about all you can get. And we see that there's two reasons why we have all these subsequent awakenings. One is an elevation in temperature. So if we're not recovering well and we're metabolically stressed and have that higher inflammation, then
that higher baseline temperature doesn't allow you to get into a deep repertive sleep because your body temperature goes up and then it drops and that's when you get into a deep sleep and it stays low until you start to have a corresponding cortisol rise and then that increases your temperature as well and that's our normal wakening. If you are metabolically stressed and you have that elevation in temperature you fluctuate right on that whole wake sleep wake sleep wake sleep. So you have a very fractured sleep.
The other reason we see a lot of awakenings is hypoglycemia, because female athletes are not eating enough.
Part of it is the fueling and how they're fueling through the day, but also overall volume of calories and nutrient density. So if they're not eating enough, then they become hypoglycemic at night. And we see this with the CGM, all these awakenings can be really stopped easily if we one focus on getting out of LEA or we have an evening protein snack. And that does not interfere with sleep. Mike Wornsby from Southern Florida has done a lot of research.
Research on what kinds of things can you have before sleep that's not going to interfere with the sleep architecture. So we look at cottage cheese or yogurt or casein before bed, and that attenuates that hypoglycemia, and then they get into the deep reparative sleep. So once we get the sleep nailed, then it feeds forward to dropping inflammation, better glucose control, better temperature control, better aspect of fatigue, and recovery from fatigue. So I mean those are the two major things that I'm always honing in on when a female
athlete comes in.
It's like, what's happening? And I'm like, okay, well, first I want to see what your sleep is doing. And then I also want you to take me through the day of how you're eating and how you're training, because there might be a circadian rhythm shift. And then that will complicate sleep as well. Because if we have a circadian rhythm shift, then the melatonin rise that happens about nine o'clock gets blunted. And then that subsequently interrupts sleep.
Dr. Terry (08:30)
So when you mentioned all that stuff to eat at night, I didn't hear the big bowl of ice cream.
stacy (08:35)
Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (08:36)
Yeah.
stacy (08:39)
That's not gonna help sleep.
Dr. Spencer Baron (08:41)
Yeah.
Dr. Terry (08:41)
no, my wife is gonna be so disappointed.
stacy (08:44)
Mm.
Dr. Terry (08:46)
So I do have a y people get so rigid, right? when they work out. They you know, I I have to work out. Spencer's one of these, I have to get up at three thirty and work out at five and but I think men can handle that a little bit better than than women because women they I I'll hear I have to work out this time and what hap you know, sometimes these trainers or don't know how to work out, you know, cause
Would a good question be what's your temperature, what's your HOV and today, today was gonna be a hard day, but based off this, we're gonna go easy today and you're y this would be a better day to train. Train around the menstrual cycle, training around that temperature. Is these good questions that happen that people have a specific time when they have to work out?
stacy (09:29)
It is a great question.
Because a lot of us are time pressed anyway, so we get into the routine like, I'm gonna go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday at this time and Tuesday and Thursday I'm gonna get up and do that and it we're very rigid in that structure. so I always go with the mental and physical RPE. So I tell women and men too, when you wake up, what is your rating perceived exertion scale one to ten physically? So physically you might be a six. How are you mentally one to ten? And you might in
Up being only a two. But if you get up and you start moving and that starts to rise a little bit, and then you get to the gym and you do a couple of warm-up sets, and then all of a sudden physically you feel like an eight and mentally you're six. Go for it. Do your normal thing. But if it doesn't increase and you still feel really fatigued, central nervous system is really kind of not firing, then make it a technique day, make it a mobility day. You're still keeping the consistency, but you're not overloading and overstressing. And I don't think the fitness
industry has given people permission to do that. It's always about go hard, you're doing this, get a sweat fest, you go to the gym, you come out bulletproof, and it's all this more aggressiveness instead of like, let's be a little bit more intuitive, because if you're always trying to push shit uphill, you are not ever going to adapt to get fitter.
Dr. Spencer Baron (10:52)
Hm.
Could could the exact same work out for a woman that you know, feels good one week and then excessive stress kind of parlaying into what you had just shared, but even when her fitness hasn't changed, they could have an emotional response that it's excessive stress.
stacy (11:13)
Yes, and it feels harder.
happened to me today. We ended up moved here and there's a hike down the road, we drop our daughter off and we go up. It's Mount Sinitas and I've had a couple of really hard, stressful days and I felt like I was trying to walk through mud. Where last week I like up the hill, bleep bleep, no problem at all. And so I was like, What is going on? It's like I've been so tired and stressed since a business trip last week and I haven't really like had time to pff calm down from it. I was like, I know what it is.
just like really stressed. So I know it's not fitness, but it's the accumulation of stress.
Dr. Spencer Baron (11:54)
Great. When you go uphill, does it make that noise? Yeah,
I was just I was just wondering
stacy (11:58)
It does. In my brain. Yeah.
It makes that noise in conjunction some really like retro drum and bass music.
Dr. Terry (12:07)
That's
that's awesome.
Dr. Spencer Baron (12:11)
There you go. I love it. All
right. Here here's one for every patient and coach. When a when a when a female suddenly loses motivation, becomes kind of irritable, less confident, uncoordinated, or just doesn't look herself, how do we know whether we're seeing an attitude problem or a brain and body signaling underfueling, poor recovery, hormonal disruption, iron deficiency, or even or even just too much training?
stacy (12:39)
I would definitely put it in the physical. Like a lot of the times when we're looking at all the irritability, the depression and the short temperature or short short temper, it comes from the fact of there's this override of the central nervous system through high stress. And is it high stress because you're not fueling adequately? Mm for the most part I'd say most recreationally active women are not fueling appropriately. 'Cause we are now back in the whole skinny is cool mindset, which that could be a whole
and then we also have the rush, like I wanna get this done, I gotta get this done, and I immediately have to get back to what I'm supposed to be doing and the timeline pressures. And all of that also doesn't allow people to absorb and kind of sit and have a central nervous system reset. So we see all this all the time. If you're you're if you're waking up and you're dead in fatigue and you do some stretching and some mindfulness or some breathing exercises, and then all of a sudden you're like, I can do this, then that's an indication that you're highly stressed.
And we need to like look at how we're going to reset the central nervous system. and then if we start looking at depression and that over exuding like three PM I need to sleep, that's another indication of under recovery and undernutrition. if someone has had a really hard emotional bout then the irritability and depression probably is coming from that emotional
aspect. So it could be you know, something that's happened at work, miss of a promotion or a project deadline, or maybe there's a death in the family, like something that's very emotionally charged, that that's going to contribute to depression, anxiety, rage, irritability. But a lot of the times we bring it back to the physical and the bubble that women are in and the expectations that are put on them as an active woman in a fitness in the fitness world.
had this conversation yesterday where you look at the different pockets, it's like what does it mean to be a woman growing up in a strong body now versus back in the eighties and nineties? There was no such thing as growing up in a strong body in the eighties and nineties.
So that culture shift has been recent, but the mentality of trying to say skinny or quote, just get toned, which we know is not a real word, is still very inherent. And I see that play out in a lot of forty onwards women where they're trying to maintain a certain physique and they don't really realize why they are training, but they feel like they have to ascribe to these certain cultural conventions of you go to a boot camp or a lifting class and you need to come out super sweaty and complete
Wasted because that means you had a good workout. But when you're growing up in the strong body mentality, you know you go in and you have a really heavy lift session, you come out feeling great, but you don't feel sweaty and exhausted and that means it was a really good training session. So we have these mental shifts that are occurring at the same time. We're trying to unpack why these things are going on for women, why we are under recovered, why we're not eating enough.
why we're trying to maintain ourselves in this confined of a of a cultural structure that started way, way before any of us were even in the fitness world.
Dr. Spencer Baron (15:52)
You know, I wanna ask you about something about hormonal disruption, 'cause now we're hearing about more not just medications, but you know, things like sunscreen or moisturizer that have chemicals in them that people are using that are causing hormonal disruptions, not just the in the female, but you know, obviously the males as well. Have you been having conversations about that as well? Certain things that people are eating or putting on their skin?
stacy (16:21)
Yeah, the endocrine disruptors. So really
Dr. Spencer Baron (16:23)
Yeah.
stacy (16:23)
trying to get people to understand that the more ingredients that are in something, the more it can be absorbed through the skin. And if it's absorbed through the skin, it goes in systemic systemically. I mean, this is why we have transdermal medicines, right? Because it goes through the skin, it gets absorbed systemically. so this is why you're seeing a lot of paraben free cosmetics. You're seeing just like really minimalistic n quote natural products that are coming
the market and it is an answer to these endocrine disruptors. The same with food. The more ultra processed the food is, the less your body's going to recognize it and can cause some disruptions. And microplastics and using a reusable plastic bottle now let's go to you know, like a a metal or or another kind of of container that doesn't have the plastics in it. Because there's so much research coming out now that part of the global uprise of infertility are all these endocrine disruptors.
Dr. Spencer Baron (17:24)
So you you started to mention before some signs. I would love to just really clearly express that to our audience. You know, you got a female athlete that's setting all these personal records and winning and looking incredibly fit and physiologically she's unrav unraveling underneath. But could you describe some of the signs? Not
some th that are that somebody could be sensitive to, not that they're watching or or ordering or telling them, but something that they're intuitively feeling.
stacy (17:59)
I think two of the biggest markers that women have not been told to lean into. One I mean, just being intuitive is w is one of the biggest things, but
It all comes back to how you feel. So you might be hitting all your peak performance, but do you have an appetite? Most often no, because the harder you train and the more inflammation you drive, the more you have appetite hormone disruption. And so you don't feel hungry. You also don't feel thirsty. And these are are part of the problem of why so many higher end athletes get into this low energy availability because their training goes up. They don't correspond to eat more for that training.
training, then they get the appetite disruption and a muta mu a mute of the thirst, so then they're not actively looking to eat or to drink, which compounds com compounds the factor of low energy availability.
And then it's a lot of people go, I go to bed by eight thirty, I crash out by eight thirty or nine and then I c keep sleeping. And if you get to the point where you're crashing out and you never feel recovered when you wake up, then we know that your body is just on the cusp of what we used to say over trained, but now we say under recovered.
Dr. Terry (19:21)
Hmm. Hmm.
Dr. Spencer Baron (19:24)
Change it up.
Dr. Terry (19:24)
Do you find
that we had a we had a guy on, do you find that women were always I mean, I was always raised with women's intuition. Women all y'all never question when a woman says, I feel and my wife is like that, you know, she'll I fe I feel like something's around the corner and you come around the corner and there's something around the corner, but so do you feel that women are starting to be less intuitive and they're starting to l listen to the internet, listen to their smartwatch and sort of listening to their inner body and they're not
do you see this becoming a problem and how do you get back to listening to their intuition?
stacy (19:58)
It's become such a problem that there's a movement called intuitive eating and intuitive sleeping.
because it's trying to retrain people how to listen to their body, to understand what it means to be fed, what it understand what it means to be hungry, what it means to sleep well, because we've been bombarded with so much data that hasn't really been interpreted properly. and I know that most people understand that I have a big issue with artificial intelligence and the insights that are happening for women. but we've been bombarded with all of this data
and it i it's lost the ability to have the human in the loop. So we have to retrain the human to take control and say, hey, what does it feel like at three o'clock? If you've had X, Y, Z to eat prior to, how do you feel at three? Do you have energy? Do you feel tired? Do you feel like you need to go get a breath of fresh air and then you'll be energized? Like what's going on? because we see that that's a critical point where we start to have a changeover of cortisol. And if you have a blunt
of your cortisol responses and it directly interferes with how you feel in the afternoon. So this is one of the first things that we do to reteach people what it means to feel hungry or full because if we're energized throughout the day through adequate nutrition, it also helps with our cortisol responses. So we don't have the walling or the super tired I need caffeine at three or four in the afternoon. and it's really interesting that after a couple of weeks women are like, hey, I've got this. I don't have that dip anymore.
because now I know what it means to eat and be nourished to have the energy rather than to hold my food intake because I'm super busy or I've been told to fast or whatever it is and then I have a very short eating window and then I overeat or I don't have time to adequately get all the nutrition and then about five
I'm starving and tired, and then I get home and eat so much before dinner, and then I don't have a real meal, and then about eight or nine o'clock I'm hungry again, so I'm snacking before bed. So, you know, it just is a cascading effect. And once we start to nail that food intake and get rid of that afternoon slump, and then women are like, I get it now. And a lot of times I'll tell women, let's put your wearable away for two weeks. I really want you to understand and listen to your body's cues, and then they start.
to get into a normal circadian rhythm that works and then they're like, I don't need to lean into my wearable. and it's it's pretty powerful when you start to see this.
Dr. Terry (22:35)
So do you find a wait, do you find a difference between the women that are in their sixties and seventies that grew up with their intuition and have learned the wearables and like it versus the twenty year old who's never has grown up with wearables and technology and doesn't know the other side?
stacy (22:52)
There is a difference for sure. So women who have embraced technology later and they still have doubt in their wearable, they hold on to that doubt. They're like, I'm not in the red, I feel great. I'm gonna go do whatever. I'm not listening to you. I'm not gonna close my loop for steps. You don't know what else I've done. You didn't record it well.
But younger generation who's grown up with technology, they're like, my god, it says I'm in the red, I better not do anything and walking around at nine o'clock at night 'cause I need to close my my Apple loop, right? So they're just so entrenched in what the data tells them, not realizing that these algorithms are very, very rough and it's based on male physiology. And we know that there's a beat to beat difference for women versus men, especially when looking at the QRS.
And that's what's registered in the algorithm for heart rate variability. And then it also depends on what wearable you're using because a recovery score can be weighted differently between an aura and a whoop and a garmin, depending on what wearable it is. You could have three or four different wearables and it'll give you a different recovery score in the morning.
So there's so many different nuances within these algorithms that are not being explained or shown to the public. So that's why I'm like so many people are leaning into the supposed objective data that isn't accurately representing their bodies.
Dr. Spencer Baron (24:12)
You I wanted to ask you 'cause you mentioned earlier about your issue with data and you know, th a lot of women our patients are coming in. It used to be Dr. Google. you're playing Doctor Google today? Now it's I asked Chad and or Claude, so go there, please. Tell us how you really feel.
stacy (24:33)
Okay. How I really feel.
Dr. Terry (24:34)
Wait, wait,
d wait, did you get your espresso shot first?
stacy (24:39)
no I have not. Which is probably good. So
Dr. Spencer Baron (24:42)
Yeah, 'cause she could go off on this right now.
stacy (24:45)
Right. I will say how frustrated I am that we have
a new company startup that just closed funding to address this particular issue. And I say that because we have a new women's intelligence platform where it's myself and a collection of twenty other top academics that have vetted all the research that has come in to drive the platform. And it is true research done on female physiology. We've looked at the methods, we've looked at the power, we've looked at the themes, if it if it's been a mixed
Or not, so we have an entire rubric that excludes all the poor data.
Dr. Terry (25:27)
Mm.
stacy (25:27)
And as I've been testing our chat and our output, I go into something like Claude or Chat GTP and I'll put the same question across. And this is one that I was laughing about. I had read somewhere and someone asked me a question about caffeine and and not having caffeine within 90 minutes of waking up.
How can you have protein coffee when you're not supposed to have caffeine within 90 minutes? I'm like, that's not true. So I go into all hours, it's falling on the research. They're like, there's no research to validate this. I don't know, you know. So then it goes into what cortisol does and the appetite hormones, and you can go down the rabbit hole. Put it into Claude and it goes, Yes, this is absolutely true. And I put in, No, this is incorrect. Comes back with, you are right, this is incorrect. It was started by a podcast by Andrew Huberman.
So then I go into chat and I say, you know, ninety minutes caffeine or ninety minutes upon waking, no caffeine. Is this true? And it says, Yes, it's absolutely true. And I said, No, it's incorrect. And so and start arguing with me, No, it is correct. No, it is correct. It's like, my gosh. The human in the loop needs to be there and that's what we've done because the misinformation of AI is just driving this echo chamber of misinformation. It pulls up anything from anywhere and brings it into
what it's gonna regurgitate and it learns from that misinformation. And we also know from a report that the UN released three weeks ago that because there's only around thirty percent of women in the whole AI industry, that there is an increase in male bias misogyny and having the projection that women should be like in the home and not out working. So if you go in and you try to put an image of you put in a description of a
a career woman. It'll come up as a nurse or a secretary or a woman with a lot of kids and you put in career man it comes out with the business and the lab coat and all the projected stereotypes. And the UN is like, we've got to stop this 'cause it's perpetuating violence against women. So if we're thinking about the everyday person that's going to lean into AI with all this other stuff around it, it's a quagmire of misinformation. And
I'll stop on my rant there because that's enough for people to sit back and go, What?
Dr. Spencer Baron (27:48)
That is beautiful. my gosh.
Dr. Terry (27:50)
Is is the woman
i i is the woman that's being produced, is she at least barefoot when she's in the kitchen?
okay.
stacy (27:56)
I don't know, I've only seen from the waist up. But maybe
maybe we should go in later and say a head to toe picture of a career woman and see what it comes out with.
Dr. Terry (28:06)
Yeah they
And then a big slap comes across my face.
stacy (28:13)
Maybe, maybe not.
Dr. Terry (28:16)
That's fascinating.
Dr. Spencer Baron (28:15)
Actually it's funny, just this
yeah, just this morning
stacy (28:18)
Yeah. And the other worrying thing
that I've seen is there's a advertisement circulating about chat GTP and it and it's like an old woman who's isolated living by herself and it's like, You're not really alone, you can chat with me. I'm like, that is not getting rid of social isolation. I'm sorry, that is not, because it is a misinformation chat bot that someone is interplaying with and it the
then they lean into it as a friend and it's not. It's not part of getting rid of that social isolation. So there's a lot of more interesting and yet scary aspects that a lot of people aren't overtly aware of but is happening.
Dr. Terry (29:00)
We had a guest that Spencer remembered us that said the most things they're searched on Chat GPT are mental health, which is scary.
stacy (29:08)
Yeah. 'Cause then they're like, it's my therapist. It learns me, it knows who I am, but it's not a therapist and it's not leaning into the right information and it doesn't know you. It's just reflecting what you've put into it.
Dr. Terry (29:21)
Mm.
Dr. Spencer Baron (29:22)
Actually just this morning Karen said to me that she asked Chat what would you like as a human name instead of chat? And it came back, Well you can call and the dialogue was like like one of her buddies, you know. Well you can call me Alex and I go, Boy, is that gender neutral? Alex? Alex could be
stacy (29:41)
Yeah, I know.
Dr. Spencer Baron (29:42)
a woman or I could be man? I go she goes, Why don't you do it? And I go, No, I'll get back. Call me Pat. Pat is a guy
Dr. Terry (29:48)
I was just gonna say Pat. I was
just gonna say that. Hey, right. Yes.
stacy (29:52)
S Saturday Night Live comes into mind.
Dr. Spencer Baron (29:54)
Yes, yes!
Dr. Terry (29:57)
I was as soon as you said Alex, I was thinking Saturday Live and Pat.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:00)
That's exactly where I I yeah. Yeah. Was
stacy (30:04)
Yes.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:05)
that was was Pat Jim really Jim Carrey? 'Cause I
Dr. Terry (30:07)
Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:07)
was trying to remember. Was that who who was yeah, was that
stacy (30:09)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:11)
That was great. I just broke out in a sweat. Okay. So let me Alright,
Dr. Terry (30:12)
It's so good.
Dr. Spencer Baron (30:19)
moving right along. L let's put let's put everything together here. All right, tomorrow morning.
woman wakes up and has to make one decision. Do I push, do I modify, or just plain old recover? So before she looks at her watch or follows her you know, training plan, give us five signals from her own body that she should check and which one she should never ignore.
stacy (30:48)
Heart rate because if you wake up and you have a faster than normal heart rate, then that's an indication that you have not slept well and not recovered. We also think about thirst. A lot of women don't feel thirsty in the morning, but as soon as you start to drink water then you will start to feel thirsty and that lets your appetite hormones and everything kind of requeue.
and then when you wake up and you have a stretch and you put your head outside and find your energy levels. Like if y like for me I know until I have my espresso I'm gonna be a bit flat. But if I have my espresso and then I start to feel normal, I'm like good to go. But if I have it and I don't feel normal, like today, then I know it's gonna be one where I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna have a struggle fest if I try to go hard or I better back off.
so it's some of those those little things that only you know. So that like coffee's not gonna affect everyone like it does me. So that's my tell. But for a general woman who's looking at heart rate, is it faster than normal? How do you feel when you woke up? Did you wake up before your alarm because you could or were you like fighting the alarm and hitting snooze and you just didn't want to get up? are you thirsty or not? Drink water, you know, just to try to cue things in.
how do your muscles feel? Do you feel sore and heavy or do you feel like, yeah, I can go? so those are some of the top tells. And then the other one is make sure you have some food. 'Cause as soon as you have a little bit of fuel then everything kicks into gear. So if you're like mentally, no, I don't want to do this and you have a little bit of food and you start feeling better, like, yeah, okay, maybe I was just low on food. so those are some of the the critical non wearable things that
or kind of your your checklist of health when you first wake up.
Dr. Terry (32:40)
right, I got something. Yeah. Yeah,
Dr. Spencer Baron (32:40)
Terry, you gonna ask something, yeah, sorry.
Dr. Terry (32:42)
you just recently moved from New Zealand to the States. You know, you're on podcast, you're talking to people all day a lot, but what have you no what do you notice between the mentality of women and and people from Europe, from the islands, fr and to the States? What are some common threads and what do you think we can learn from them and they can learn from us?
stacy (33:07)
I think the pace of life is completely different.
'Cause we look at like what's happening in New Zealand, Australia, Pacifica, even UK, everyone's productive, but it's not this crazy like go go go twenty four seven that we have in the States. one of the reasons that my daughter was excited to move here is because she could have Amazon in three hours. Like that doesn't happen anywhere else, right? Shopping, twenty four hour shopping, because it's just this go, go, go, go, go and there's no that there's no indication of fallibility.
And it's okay to take a pause. But you have have have to have bubbles that you surround yourself to say it's okay to take a pause 'cause the general scope here in the States is go twenty four seven. and it took a long time for me to unwind from that mentality 'cause we went from Silicon Valley over to New Zealand. And Silicon Valley is like to the nth degree of twenty four seven.
N and you know, I laugh at that, I get frustrated that there isn't anything open past four on a Saturday for the most part in New Zealand. But when you think about it, you're like, Well that's because they have a life and they don't necessarily want to be open till nine PM. Late night shopping on a Thursday goes only to nine PM, whereas most of the shops here and in Europe are open till late. And then we look at Europe and they have the culture of eating really good food. we met some Italian friends last night and it was really
good simple food and there was no ultra processed, it was all handmade, it was relatively quick. But you think about it, it's like when you think think of the cultures that as Americans we think have it dialed in, it's because there are pockets of things that have been kind of ingrown in their unique culture of simple, tasty food, things that we can identify. We know where it comes from. There are no feedlots.
we look at the community aspect.
where there's this huge upsurge of social isolation and particularly in the states and areas that are really wanting to be like the US. So we see like the teens across the world are all suffering from the same mental anguish and mental depression and the fear of being alone because they're looking at social media, which is really a huge representation of what's happening primarily in the US.
So when we start talking about how different people are approaching training, how people are approaching recovery, you do have a cultural nuance depending on where you are and what surrounds you that allows you to take the pause. In the States, you have to carve out the time and be okay with taking that pause and push back against that go, go, go, go, go. In Europe, it's not that hard to push back because it's already inherent there. We think about
the siestas that happen in Spain. We think about the entire month of August that everyone takes off in Europe. In New Zealand, everything shuts down for three to four weeks over December, January because you're taking a Christmas vacation. That wouldn't happen here. So it's how the culture wraps people that will indicate how people will react to how they are supposed to be doing things in their life.
Dr. Terry (36:27)
Hmm.
Dr. Spencer Baron (36:27)
What what is the attitude in where where you lived and and overseas like that, the towards you know, iPads and you know, all the electronics that they that kids are entertained by. So a parent would just hand the kid, you know, the iPhone and they get just mesmerized 'cause they're finding now that it's really atrophying the myelin or not allowing the myelin or
to to to grow normally. that was a study that I was recently privy to that blew me away. What's the attitude in other parts of the country like that? And for real.
stacy (37:05)
Same problems we have here. But this week
New Zealand followed Australia and banned social media for sixteen and younger.
Dr. Spencer Baron (37:14)
Yeah.
stacy (37:15)
so by the nature of being a smaller
Dr. Terry (37:17)
How how did they d how did they do that?
stacy (37:20)
that's what has to be worked out. But what happened in Australia is they access
because they can trace it and you have to like have permissions and stuff that just always loopholes around it. But then it was also of movement because like here we have the movement towards brick phones or or like in San Francisco there are different bars and and clubs that are having tech free nights. And so like the tech industry, kids are com I call them kids, but their twenty year olds are coming and playing card games and having social interaction like we used to do, right? Before technology. So there are movements to get away from it.
So when we're looking at banning social media for sixteen and under, for the most part
Dr. Terry (37:59)
Mm.
stacy (37:59)
it's it it seems like, Well, how are you gonna do that? But there's that undercurrent of movement. Now I have the excuse 'cause I'm the meme mom who's like no Snapchat, no social media and now I can lean into the government saying, Well, you can't have it 'cause you're not sixteen or older
so it kind of helps the parents who are trying to find a leg up to get the kids away from it. So it's just a helping hand to be able to stop and the schools have also banned phones. Like you cannot have a phone even in your bag to use on breaks in in New Zealand. It's like you have to turn the phone in and you can get it at the end of the day, but you cannot use it at all on any of the campuses anywhere because of this whole like bullying aspect that happens on Snap or checking social media.
media and the waves of of emotion that come with it and it also reduces the aspect of we're here and you're not, let's send messages around and create that FOMO because you're not part of our group. So they're really trying to lean in to eliminate that, to reduce the angst and the social anxiety that comes with social media. But you don't see that happening here in the States. There are pockets, but not in a big way.
Dr. Spencer Baron (39:12)
Do you
suggest anything as a way to enhance I mean the you know capacity that the brain and its maturation can how you can suggest any ways to evolve that like with exercise or brain training or you know I have a buddy of mine who's a functional neurologist who he has all sorts of cool ways. Do you have anything that's specific for women that they could start tomorrow or for young young
Yeah.
stacy (39:44)
Yeah, I'm gonna lean into strength training because there's so much research still that's coming out. I gave a talk at my daughter's school like two nights before we moved and it was over four hundred people that came 'cause they wanted to know about keeping girls in sport.
and part of it is like, well, how do we start? Because we are still leaning into the baseline of of boys and how we coach boys. It's like, well, we have to create a better environment. We know that girls are not motivated by being yelled at and singled out.
Boys are. So we have more of a group collaboration. And if there's as a coach, there's something wrong that you want to point out, you don't yell out that athlete's name. You just yell out what you want people to correct. So it's not directed to someone. And if we're looking at at how do we create more body efficacy for girls because maturation is so different across the years, then we look at leaning into strength training. And what does that mean? That doesn't necessarily mean
Let's look at developing posterior chain. Let's look at developing balance, uniplanar movement, let's look at that functionality because the biomechanics of our girls change completely at at puberty. We have the widening of the hips and the shoulders, lengthening of the arms and legs before we have core strength. So addressing all those issues makes a girl f have more body confidence, which then lets her feel like she can participate more in sport.
And the best way to address that is through resistance training and strength training. And not only that, we see it helps build bone, which peaks towards the end of our teenage, early twenties, and we're seeing a higher incidence of early onset osteopenia in our early thirties because people haven't had any capacity to build peak bone mass.
So if we're leaning into strength training and we're doing multi-directional stress and we might be doing some plometrics to improve the type two, all of that leans forward to better body composition, better self-awareness and proprioception, better body confidence, having the capacity to feel at home in the sport that they love or new sport that they want to try. And then if you have a coaching staff that embraces that and creates a positive sporting environment.
it feeds forward to keeping our girls active and in sport.
And even if it isn't a organized sport, just opening up a weight room in a in a high school so it's not just so boy oriented. So maybe you have practice times that are just for the boys and maybe you have some that are just for the girls because it's still very intimidating for young girls to come into a weight room even if it's at a high school, because it's still so bro oriented. So there's lots of different touch points that we have to have to really break that baseline and say
Hey, this is how we know it works for boys. We've seen it work really well. But we have a global epidemic of girls dropping out of sport. And it isn't because they get their period. Yes, that could be a factor. But it's all these other biomechanical and emotional and mental challenges that no one's telling them how to navigate. And so they just think that I'm not good enough, so they drop out. Or they don't feel like they can manage the sport because they feel ungangly.
But if we take that time to retrain the body how to run, how to jump, how to throw, how to move properly, it encourages all of that positive self awareness, that positive efficacy, the friendships that come, the camaraderie that comes with all the movement. And that's why w we three probably go to the gym 'cause it's like the adult playground. You get to see your friends and that's what we want for our girls. And then it leans forward into
how the body composition is better for the twenties, the thirties, the forties onwards. And we see also that team sport is a way that girls can learn time management and and leadership and teammanship. So that leans into better aspects for when they get into the working world. We see that most women who are in a C suite have had some kind of sports team sports background because it
all starts
early. So it's really, really important that we address human in the loop, girl side of things, to retrain their bodies differently because their bodies are changing differently than what we see with our boys.
Dr. Spencer Baron (44:23)
the comment you made about team sports and how important that was. I read a study that was really fascinating on how the if if if before a t I think fif up to fifteen years old or up to if you're forced to or you're playing a sport in high school, what they did was they followed those children that went on after they're eighteen where they can make their own decisions about a sport. If they continued in a team sport, they mapped them out till
followed them till they're in their elder you know elder ages and found that those were more successful the ones that continued in a teamwork environment on their own. And it was pretty cool. So let that be known.
stacy (45:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (45:09)
do you you you mentioned strength training, but what about like grappling I see a lot of women getting involved in in boxing, Tai Chi, jujitsu and do you have any suggestions there?
stacy (45:23)
great for appropriate reception, agility, all the things that we tend to lose rapidly, especially when we become more sedentary in our job. So it's great. I think the problem that we have in the fitness industry is we tend to gravitate to the one thing we love and we don't think that we should be doing other things. Like I know the Pilates crew out there thinks that I hate Pilates. I'm like, I don't hate Pilates. But it's not true strength training that we want, right?
Dr. Spencer Baron (45:46)
That's all they do. Yeah.
stacy (45:48)
It's really good for isometric, it's good for balance, proprioception
and some isometric strength, but it's not the same as lifting heavy. And lifting heavy isn't going to give you the appropriate reception and the agility that something like Pilates and yoga will. And we know that yoga and Pilates also improves our ligament and tendon health because of the isometric holds. So they work together. So if we're thinking about grappling and jiu-jitsu and tai Chi and all of the other kind of mixed martial arts, we also have to lean into we need some strength training in there. Maybe we need to be out in nature because being out
in nature is so powerful for reducing overall stress.
There's so much research coming out showing that when you take a walk or run in nature, it does so much more for your mental and physical health than trying to run or walk on a treadmill. Maybe we take grappling outside. Put the mask outside on the green field, right? So then you have some outside space. But we can't keep in this whole mentality of all or nothing. We have to look at this is my primary and how do I benefit my primary by doing all these other things on the outside. And we don't have to lean in fully
To be a full strength training athlete. We need to do enough to reduce injury risk and to make sure that all of our stabilizers are strong. I need to be outside in nature, especially green space, as much as I can, but not to the point where it takes away from my primary love of whatever sport I'm doing. And I think that's the problem that we have in the fitness and health space is that we tend to say women in sport, women in fitness, but not looking across the lifespan. We have girls.
Who are going through puberty. We have girls who have menstrual cycle dysfunction. We have women who have menstrual cycle dysfunction. So we have the reproductive years. And what does that look like? Then we have pregnancy, perhaps. Then we also have perimenopause, postmenopause, and each one of those requires a different lens to see how to maximize sleep performance nutrition. But for men, it's like you go from boy, teenager into manhood, and it's more linear. And unfortunately, that's how we've all been
conditioned.
To
think for both sexes. So if we talk about what it means from a sport perspective as well, we still have that linear mindset of you want to be a triathlete, it's swim, bike, run, and maybe a little bit of strength training on the off off season. You want to be a great track runner? Yeah, well, we have to also be in the gym doing Olympic lifts. But there's no conversation of some nice long, slow runs in the trails that's going to help with mental capacity. So we have to really break out of that all or nothing mindset.
to improve athletes regardless of of sex or gender.
Dr. Spencer Baron (48:31)
Can you continue on that same conversation about cross training? 'Cause you know, you got we get these kids, Dr. Terry and I get these kids that come in that they are perennial baseball pitchers or perennially playing tennis and you know, you ask them how many how many days do you you practice? And they go, five days a week, and they go, Well, what do you do on the weekends? we have competition. So we had a patient that was a junior Olympic hopeful in s in the I think it was
the breast stroke. And then the mom was smart enough to go, you really should cross train. They put her in flag football, she blew her ACL out on the first. Yeah. Yeah. So sh and she couldn't she couldn't compete in the Junior Olympics in her eleventh grade year. So can you imagine? Any thoughts or suggestions on when you do choose cross training how that how that
stacy (49:24)
What it means.
Dr. Spencer Baron (49:25)
might might look for safety reasons?
stacy (49:27)
Yeah. Well I was like
I thought you were gonna say that she got into the into the weight room and started developing some of her stabilizers and then went and won, not started flag football and
Dr. Terry (49:36)
Yeah.
stacy (49:37)
blew her ACL. yeah, so when we
Dr. Spencer Baron (49:39)
Wouldn't that have been nice, yeah.
stacy (49:40)
talk about cross training it's like like I said, it's like here's your primary and your major goal. So what's gonna complement it? Where flag football's really not gonna complement breaststroke.
yeah, completely different movements and your body's still learning and we know there's a massive incident of ACL terror in our pretty much eleven to fifteen year olds and people are like, Why is it happening? And I was at the epicenter for global women's sports summit in Portland last week and part of it they were asking why are these ACL injuries happening? I'm like, have you looked from the ground up? Like, what do you mean? And
one, they're still doing quad strengthening like no, because if you have really strong quads and we know that women have weak posterior, as soon as they go to decelerate, pushes the knee forward and boom, ACL, right? Pivot with the knee forward. So let's look at posterior chain, but then also look at the shoes. Like how are you looking at cleat placement on the shoes? Are they just shrinking pink shoes that a company has come and and scan the foot and then it's like okay, we'll just make the shoe smaller, but this is the same cleat placement.
And we know from the research that we need a different cleat placement and a soccer and a rugby boot because of the way that the gate and the center of gravity is different in women versus men. And the way they stop and pivot is different between women versus men. And that without looking at that, that contributes to ACL. So like with flag football, I'm like, she probably wasn't very strong posterior, she didn't have the right kind of shoes on, she pivoted and pheom, there goes the ACL. So when we again go back to cross training.
there's a lot of conversation about concurrent training. If I'm an aerobic or an anaerobic athlete, should I be doing strength training and in what order? There really is no difference. As you get older, sure. We want to lean into strength training first because that's what we want. We want to be able to build and maintain muscle. But when we're younger there really isn't an interference. So it's like use the strength training. Maybe it isn't being in a gym. Maybe it's on the playground.
and you're doing pull ups and monkey bars and you're balancing and you're doing seesaw and maybe you're doing the cargo net for agility. That's all resistance training because it's challenging different stabilizing muscles that's going to enhance what you're already doing. So there's lots of ways to think about what is cross training, but it's not a completely different sport that's organized and structured because our kids don't need that. I had that conversation with one of the commissioners at the at the summit
And 'cause my daughter plays soccer and I was like, Yeah, but it's getting too much 'cause she was playing for high school and a club and it's like, No, we're pulling you because you don't need to be doing that much. You're not getting enough sleep. Every weekend is early and you're not even on the traveling team. And they have all acknowledged and the commissioners have all acknowledged that the way that youth sport is in the States has got to change.
Dr. Spencer Baron (52:35)
We had Holly Silver's Grinnelli on talking about ACL terrorist. Sh that woman is brilliant when it comes down. She has a list of eleven exercises that I've been handing to my patients that do volleyball, soccer, pr I mean, th they do so much of it and I'm so worried about their them blowing out their knees 'cause it's become so popular, you know. Yeah. Anyway, s it is.
I hey, I'm ready for the rapid fire questions. if you're ready, we got we got yeah, yeah. We we got we got
Dr. Terry (53:07)
let her hair down. Look at that.
stacy (53:09)
Let's go. Pull my hair up. Let's go.
Dr. Spencer Baron (53:16)
five of them as you remember from before. Mm and they're going deep. You ready? Question number one. You once wanted to be an army ranger or a navy SEAL?
If Stacy Simms had never become a scientist, what do you think you'd be doing today?
stacy (53:36)
I would be a barista and a florist, but I would not own the cafe.
Dr. Terry (53:42)
That's so opposite Navy SEAL.
stacy (53:42)
Flowers and caffeine. Happy
Dr. Spencer Baron (53:45)
that come from? How what what
was that? Yeah, the florist. Really? You
stacy (53:48)
Where did it come from? Because, yeah, part
of the the joy that I get from the stuff that I do is helping people. And I've had quite a few women in the past week come up and say that I've changed their lives because they've altered training and nutrition. And it's like i and they're so happy and across the years and like the thing that I love the most is bringing happiness to people because there's lack of empathy and happiness in the world.
Flowers bring happiness in any situation, caffeine always makes people happy. Especially if it's good. So if you combine them
Dr. Spencer Baron (54:21)
That's right.
stacy (54:22)
and you don't have the stress of being the owner and you're just the chatty barista and florist, it's great. And then you can go to the flower markets and pick out all the beautiful flowers and make arrangements which makes you happy. It's a feed forward. So it's perfect.
Dr. Terry (54:37)
Look at that.
Dr. Spencer Baron (54:37)
Do you remember that movie
of the guy that worked on I think it was Wall Street or something like that and he ended up giving up that mega million dollar job?
And delivered flowers because of the same reason. There's a movie there was a movie many, many years ago on that. I'll see if I can find it for you. You'll like it. You you'll relate to it. Question number two.
stacy (54:55)
Yeah, let me know. Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (54:58)
All right, you've spent your entire career teaching women to listen to their physiology. What has your own body taught you lately that Stacey Sims, the scientist, didn't want to hear?
stacy (55:15)
that age catches up with everybody.
Dr. Spencer Baron (55:19)
There you go.
stacy (55:19)
And if you're not
careful, you will have chronic injuries, especially soft tissue injuries, that take forever to go away. so as my husband said, In your new book, do you have a section in there that talks about changing the mental attitude of a competitive athlete into someone who is just training for life? I was like, Yes, and I'm using myself as an example, but I still haven't gotten there yet.
Dr. Spencer Baron (55:44)
Yeah?
Alright. Fair enough. We're working. We're we're ready for
stacy (55:50)
Work in progress.
Dr. Spencer Baron (55:51)
yeah, work in progress. Question number three. You've called yourself an introverted extrovert. Hmm. And now you have more than a million people following your work when nobody needs anything from s Dr. Stacy Sims, what does Stacy do that makes her ridiculously happy?
stacy (56:11)
Remember that comment I made at the beginning of the day about drum based music?
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:17)
Yeah,
yeah. Yes. That's it, huh?
stacy (56:19)
So
I'll turn on SoundCloud and put on drum and bass and go on a bike ride out in the gravel or go for a walk or I will sit in the car with it really loud and no one
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:35)
Ha ha ha
Dr. Terry (56:36)
I love that.
and I love d
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:39)
Great.
Dr. Terry (56:40)
love a good drum beat. That's so cool.
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:43)
You know, it's funny, who who
stacy (56:44)
There you go.
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:45)
who who was the person that that my gosh, that Stacy referred us to that sh she's also a professor of reject but she she confessed that Abby
Dr. Terry (56:55)
Abby Ryan.
Dr. Spencer Baron (56:56)
Ryan Smith, right, that she she goes she loves ra hardcore rap music. Her windows are tinted, they're rolled up and she just jams and nobody knows who's inside who's inside there jamming, right? Okay. Love that.
stacy (57:09)
Exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Terry (57:10)
Yeah, yeah.
stacy (57:12)
Yeah.
Dr. Spencer Baron (57:14)
that's great. Question number four. You lived in New Zealand by the ocean and now you may be trading waves for a landlocked state. So if surfing has to take a back seat, what's the next crazy sport that Stacey Sims is going to learn or finally master?
stacy (57:35)
I wanna say snowboarding, but then that requires me to be cold. So
Dr. Terry (57:41)
But you love cold plunges. I mean, come on.
stacy (57:44)
yeah. So great. So
Dr. Spencer Baron (57:44)
Yeah, that's for like s three minutes. That's about yeah.
Question number five. When your daughter when your daughter is your age and someone asks her who Stacy Simms was, forget the books, the research, followers and women are not small men, what what do you hope that she says about her mama?
stacy (58:08)
that I was a good mom and friend 'cause I try as hard as possible to be as open and non judgmental and allow her just to vent and I try to guide instead of be a you know, a hard nosed no parent until it comes to social media and then I am the woman that has no love for it, especially when it comes to kids.
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:35)
That's great. Isn't that cool? We're we're hearing that more often that what you wanna end up being to your child. So thank you so much, Stacey. You are so great. I appreciate having on our show.
stacy (58:48)
Thanks. Before we go, I have a question for you
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:50)
Yes.
stacy (58:51)
guys. Okay? Cause
Dr. Spencer Baron (58:53)
Ready.
stacy (58:53)
this has been an argument well an argument, a contention point in our house. Snapchat or vaping?
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:02)
That's like would you rather
Dr. Terry (59:03)
Ooh.
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:03)
burn in a fire or drown? What
stacy (59:05)
I know.
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:06)
is it? Snapchat or vape?
Dr. Terry (59:08)
Wow.
I would probably pick Snap, but just put restrictions on it.
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:13)
Yeah. Yeah.
stacy (59:14)
Mm.
Dr. Terry (59:17)
And the only reason that the only reason on that one is is I hear all the stuff on vaping that you can't control
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:22)
Yeah.
Dr. Terry (59:23)
the chemicals. So I would rather put parameters on Snap and not put the chemicals in my in my body.
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:32)
What are your thoughts?
stacy (59:34)
What do you say, Spence?
Dr. Spencer Baron (59:35)
Yeah, I felt the same way. Actually I would you know, w my two boys, we would have we would spend hours going in a car talking about would you rather do this or would you rather do that? What would so that's a tough one. yeah, I agree with Terry on that. The
stacy (59:53)
I say
vaping and I'll explain why. Okay, so I'm sure that you remember something someone said to you when you were little that has stuck with you for your entire life.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:00:07)
I see where this is going, yeah.
stacy (1:00:08)
Snapchat does
that. And it's a mental anguish that you cannot see, but it affects you for a very long period of time.
Whereas vaping comes out as a physical manifestation of an illness. And everyone is aware of a physical manifestation of an illness. So there's treatments for it. We all talk about the chemicals of vaping and how bad it is for you and putting parameters around vape shops and their treatments for lung issues and throat cancers and stuff, but no one is really paying attention to the damage that something like Snapchat can do for the rest of your life. So this came up when my daughter was like
Well if you don't give me Snap, would you rather me vape? And I was like, Yes. And she's like, What? And I said, The mental ramifications of Snapchat are so further reaching than what you really expect that I would rather you have a physical disease that comes from something like vaping. So, there you go.
Dr. Terry (1:01:03)
Wow.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:01:06)
Totally love that answer because that makes more sense than just May I? Alright. I am. I'm I'm
stacy (1:01:09)
You can change your you can change your mind now and come on my side if you want. Yes. Absolutely.
Dr. Terry (1:01:15)
Look at her. Why do I feel like you yeah in your house you get your way 'cause you just kinda let the draw in and then you go, boop.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:01:26)
Yeah.
stacy (1:01:27)
Nope. No, because my husband is very logical, so we have quite a few interesting conversations about it.
Dr. Terry (1:01:33)
That's awesome
though. And that's and that's why I want and
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:01:34)
That is fantastic.
Dr. Terry (1:01:36)
the end the show on you have conversations. You know, as
stacy (1:01:39)
Yes.
Dr. Terry (1:01:39)
long as people talk and have conversations, which is what this show is all about, I think that's what we need more in this world. People need to have conversations.
stacy (1:01:49)
I love it. That's why I love you guys. It's so fun.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:01:52)
thanks, Dace. That was great. Really.
Dr. Terry (1:01:52)
love you too. Stace and I
I just look forward to the next time we we hook up, but thank you so much for everything you bring to the table.
stacy (1:02:00)
You're welcome.
Dr. Spencer Baron (1:02:02)
Thanks, Dace.