Dr. Stacy Sims

It's the power.

It's the aggression.

It's the infallibility of being human.

And a woman having a menstrual cycle was deemed a fallibility.

So they're trying to push it aside.

of what's going on here i was gonna say i want to get rid of this graph okay so leave it out leave it out but it it shows just a textbook of what a menstrual cycle is is but it doesn't show the daily perturbations of estrogen and the luteinizing hormone pulses and all the things that go as natalie's saying to make it to make it work

And the conversation that we're having now in research methodology is the fact that there is no real definition of normal because every woman's cycle is variable.

So when we look at this, everyone thinks that this is normal, but we don't actually know if that is.

For the fact that a woman's variation, this can change cycle to cycle, this can change cycle to cycle.

Sometimes we have anovulatory cycles.

So until a woman can identify what her own normal is, we can't rely on this graph to actually explain to them.

And from like an exercise and sports point of view, when we get into this, the progesterone's job is to build this lush endometrial lining.

And it –

creates a lot of glycogen storage.

So we often hear about glycogen in the muscle, and that's what we're using for fuel.

It has a way of shuttling a lot of the carbohydrate away and storing it into the endometrial lining, which is why we see differences in intensity and the way that a woman can respond to exercise if she has ovulated.

Yeah.

I often put it with my athletes that it's a marker of health, that if you are able to take on the load of training, the load of travel, and maintain your normal menstrual cycle, then you are robust enough to be able to progress.

But if there becomes a misstep in your menstrual cycle, then we need to look at all the stressors and the allostatic load and pull you back and see what do we need to

Do you need to eat more?