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for 27% off site wide. That's helixleap.com slash breakdown for 27% off site wide. helixleap.com slash breakdown. We are now in a time in history where there are so many people that are overfed and undernourished. Two billion people worldwide have my Konucchi and deficiency. Eat a wide variety of foods, 30 different plants a week. 30 different plants a week. There is an endemic happening. Aussie purses risks to ELP1. They're lost at bone density, they're lost at muscle mass. For every 10 pounds that you lose on a GLP1, up to four pounds can come from muscle. When people are hot, they'll weight loss. What do we have to gain with putting muscle on? We have more control over what we're eating. Better sleep, better immunity, better blood glucose control, better cognitive function. We have the capacity to gain a higher quality of life for whatever age you want. Dr. Stacey Sims is an exercise physiologist and pioneering nutrition scientist. My frustration of being an athlete and researcher in academia, noticing that there was no real representation of women. I want to close that gender gap. What happens to the amygdala when you give oral contraceptives at a young age? We see changes that are not reversible. That increases the capacity for anxiety and fear. Tell us five things that every woman should be doing for her health. Hi, I'm Mayama Yalek. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. Today we're going to be tackling some of the biggest myths and trends in the health and nutrition industry, specifically as they relate to female physiology. And if you're thinking, I'm not a woman, maybe I'll turn this episode off. Stay tuned because we cover things that totally blew my mind from the huge dangers of GLP ones to the real truth about creatine, the biggest mistake people are making and you're likely drinking water

total of GLP ones to the real truth about creating the biggest mistake people are making. And you're likely drinking water totally wrong. This episode also covers things that many of us take for granted, like our understanding of why people go on birth control, why people lift heavy weights, how to protect your brain, how to live a longer and more vibrant life. These are things that impact men and women differently, but understanding the differences in physiology can make a huge difference. And we're speaking to Dr. Stacey Sims, the author of Roar, a really, really fantastic book, Match Your Food and Fitness, your unique female physiology for optimum performance, great health, and a strong body for life. But as we said, we're not just going to be talking about how these things impact women. We're going to be talking about the differences in male and female physiology and how so many of the trends that you might be following, you're actually approaching in the wrong way. We're also going to talk about a deficiency that impacts two billion people worldwide. And when you hear the list of symptoms, you might be surprised to find you may be at risk for this deficiency. This episode is also in honor of Women's Health Month. We could not think of a better guest to have for this very special episode than Dr. Stacey Sims. So without further ado, let's welcome to the breakdown Dr Dr. Stacey Sims. Break it down. Thanks for having me. You're excited. We're very excited to talk about Roar. And I'm really like your target audience for this book and this message. And I noticed that on page 50, there is a crushing it as a 50 year old vegan. And I thought, Stacey, didn't need to put me in your book. That is so embarrassing. Well, maybe, yeah, you know, there you go. There's lots of us who are 50 year old vegans. So why not? I wonder if you can talk about sort of the why of this book. What is special and unique about what you are helping everyone, but women in particular understand about their bodies? Yeah, I mean, it stems from my frustration of being an athlete and researcher, where as a researcher in academia, and first learning it and then trying to actually do it, noticing that there was no real representation of women.

And if women were included, they're included in studies that were with men, just to bulk up how many people are in the study, or they're very small, and they're only in like one phase of the menstrual cycle, so the really wasn't that much there, because they just generalize stuff. And through my racing career, people will always ask me questions. And I was like, okay, well, I'm going to go to lab and answer this.

And the book stemmed from my co-author who saw me at... And through my racing career people will always ask me questions. And I was like, okay, well, I'm going to go to lab and answer this.

And the book stemmed from my co-author who saw me at USA Cycling. She's like, no one is talking about this. And to me, I was like, why are we not talking about this? I've been researching this for at least 15 years because we need to do a book. So we had co-labbed on, she was a journalist, me co-labbed, and I'm a whole bunch of stuff

and every time we talked about the menstrual cycle, women needing different recovery, how we respond in the heat differently, hydration, everyone was like, oh my gosh, this is so interesting. So that was the birth of the book. One of the things that I think it's important to talk about, you know, and this is really true for every aspect of research, you know, whether it's biology, whether it's neuroscience,

whether it's biology, whether it's neuroscience, whether it's medication, whether it's aging, the reasons that studies tend to be historically all male is not just because of systemic misogyny and all of the reasons you can give, but one of the complexities of the human body for women and the physiology of women is that we have a very special monthly cycle that is really not ideal for a study where you're trying to reliably track basic physiological metrics. And so the solution has been to only do studies on men and treat women like kind of an extrapolation of what we find in men. Can you speak not only to your field, but to the general reason that we shouldn't just dismiss it as, oh, the patriarchy is just trying to, you know, screw women with research. It's a lot more complicated than that. Absolutely. I mean, I always start with, it's a historical perspective, right? We know the patriarchy and who was in the room was men. That's how scientific design started. And I don't think people really grasp onto that and how endemic it is. But we know that it's not just the menstrual cycle and sex hormones, it's also specific sex differences. We know like when you're looking at stress and environmental stress for a woman who is pregnant, there's a higher incidence of spontaneous miscarriage when they're carrying an X-Y rather than an X-X. So we look at, you know, people don't know that. I was talking to a well-known OB and she said, we never learned that.

How do you know that? It's like because when you look at sex differences from birth, you start to see all these things that happen in utero and then go through. But no one really says anything until like puberty and they're like, oh, the girls are going through this crazy stuff. And look, my boy is getting so strong and lean. Yeah, he doesn't talk, but that's kind of the aggression.

And then we get to our reproductive years. And it's always that taboo, but that time the month, or oh, I need to go on an oral contraceptive pill because my periods are really heavy. And so it's just kind of been dismissive. And I always sit back and go, how does this really affect women? It's like, it's 2026, we still don't know why endometriosis happens. We don't know why PCOS happens. We looked historically at research on like aspirin and heart attack that whole cohort was men generalized to women. We see the original osteoporosis research was done on men that were like supplied estrogen to see how it would instigate bone growth. So we see all this stuff that instead of actually using women, they use men and try to create an environment that was similar to a woman's body. It's like that's ridiculous. Like come on. If only we could make men act more like us and understand us by giving them a little estrogen, but it's actually not that simple. It's not that simple at all. Target tissue and a whole bunch of other things. I feel like we need a little more attention to what you just mentioned. In terms of sex differences and in terms of spontaneous miscarriage, can you explain a little bit what that is and what it means even though it's a little bit off topic, but I don't wanna pass that by. Yeah, so when we're looking at, they call it the the fragile XY because the XX is actually the more dominant kind of genome. And the reason why we have differences is there are certain, when you have a double X, there are certain things that are turned on and turned off according to the two X's, but with XY, you don't have that capability. So we see that the fetus, who's in X, Y, actually is more fragile. So when you start looking at what's happening under high stress conditions, the X, X becomes more stress-resilient. There's actually some epigenetic changes that are occurring within the growth and development that is making the female fetus more stress-resilient. And that leans into the more stress resilient from immunity to mental capacity onward through life. So when we start talking about the dominance of the male culture, I might, but you're the weaker sex. So to speak. Well, and I think, yeah, and sort of in genetic terms, the notion is that if you have two X chromosomes, which women do, you have an X chromosome that can rescue anything that comes up that one chromosome kind of throws out there. If you're missing a little bit, if there's some micro deletion, the other X chromosomes like, we got this, like we're okay. And you don't have these maternal autosomal recessive. We don't have those issues. Whereas with an X, Y, if something goes a little bit different on the X chromosome, there's nothing to rescue it. Because the male chromosome is very different. And it's funny, I don't know if you remember, you know, back to biology class, right? The Y chromosome is actually very, very teeny tiny, you know, compared to the X. Obviously it does all the things it needs to do to create a male. But when people talk about this sort of default being female, it's because it's the Y chromosome that actually signals, hey, we got a boy here and puts into motion the changing of the ovaries into the testes and all these sorts of things. My MBA, be Alex Breakdown and supported by cove pure researchers of a documented male fish developing female characteristics in rivers all over the United States. It comes from birth control pills that wastewater treatment plants couldn't fully filter out and that's the same water that runs into your home and that's why we are now using cove pure to purify our water. Here's how this contamination happens. People take medication, their bodies don't absorb all of it, the rest gets flushed, and it goes to waste water treatment plants that honestly were never built to catch these kind of pharmaceutical compounds. So estrone from birth control pills, antibiotics, antidepressants come right back out of your tap. Your standard picture filter from the store just doesn't cut it here. The compounds are too small, they're too persistent. You need something that is filtering more at a molecular level, and that's exactly what Covpura does. The Clear Wave Reverse Osmosis technology is certified to remove up to 99.9% of contaminants. Estrone, PFA, lead, arsenic, basically anything that isn't water gets filtered out. When you get your first taste of cove pure water, you're going to be like, oh my gosh, why is this water so delicious? Because it's delicious. That's what clean water is supposed to taste like. It's funny because I was like, how different can water taste? Guess what? It can taste very, very different. And that's why we're so excited to have cove pure as a sponsor. Those fish didn't have a choice about

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