Dr. Stacy Sims

And we need women to understand we want to build muscle, we want to sleep well, and that requires food.

Yeah, when I have athletes, because we see a higher percentage of PCOS in successful female athletes.

Why?

Like, well, what do I do?

And it's looking at what kind of training they're doing.

So we're putting this more short, sharp, high intensity to get that post-exercise response of anti-inflammatory, growth hormone response, all of these things that then bring down total body inflammation.

And then we're very careful about food intake and when we're doing it and what kinds of food.

So that they don't have to go down the route of oral contraceptive pills because that to them has an effect on their performance.

We're talking about the top end.

And when we bring it back down into recreational female athletes, we can do the same thing.

It's just we have to educate and say these are our lifestyle choices and then these are our medical choices and what's optimal for your life at this point.

I remember sitting in a high-performance meeting just maybe three years ago, and the leading athletics coach stood up and said, I know when my athletes are ready to perform on the world stage when their periods stop.

And all of us went, what?

It's like, no, that's the time where, like, we have to really look at your athlete is getting ready to crack and be injured.

And it's still this pervasive idea, and it's still pervasive even in the fitness industry that losing your period is okay because that means you're training harder.

But I think the other part of it is for women who have mayharanja or heavy bleeding and heavy cramping, they don't realize that they can get help with that as well.

And that's the conversation that isn't followed through when we're like, yes, get your period.

But if you're someone who suffers from really bad cramps, we also have to educate that there are things that we can do to help with that.

Have you noticed the norms have changed?

Yeah, because the norms that often get measured for us... Because they tripled, right?