Barbell Shrugged - [Female Strength Training] New Science on Strength Training Around Your Menstrual Cycle w/ Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #709

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

[Female Strength Training] New Science on Strength Training Around Your Menstrual Cycle w/ Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple, Anders Varner, and Doug Larson #709 Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple is a Ph.D. candidate at McMaster University with a research focus on exercise physiology and endocrinology, sex-based differences and mechanisms of muscle growth. She is also a seasoned fitness professional with years of practical experience and certifications in strength & conditioning, sports nutrition, group fitness, and personal training. Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple on Instagram Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, Dr. Lauren Colenzo-Simple is coming on the podcast and we're going to be talking about her latest paper that she wrote on women's strength conditioning, when you should be periodizing things off of your menstrual cycle and if that is even a reality anymore. And if you've been on the social medias or seen coaches talk about periodizing your strength training around your menstrual cycle, stick around, especially if you're a coach, because she's going to come in and debunk really all of that. And that's what her latest paper is all about. And we're going to dig into it. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where Dr. Andy

Galpin and Dan Garner are doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization receives. You can access that over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Lauren Colindo Simple. You know what's so awesome about this? What a lot of people don't know, they could go to the YouTube and see me and you in Andy Galpinpin's backyard freezing literally jumping into a freezer of 36 degree water and we brought cameras because why would you jump into a uh a freezer filled with ice cubes uh if you didn't have a cameraman with you to show the world that you have no fear of ice baths i And I haven't done it since. Me neither.

That's not true. That's not true. A raving review. That video actually, and you guys can go watch it. I think it's called Ice Bath Science. That video was seen by the people at XPT because Galpin and XPT are all linked together.

And they invited us up to Laird's house to do the exact same thing, but also the like heat exposure and the underwater training and breath work and stuff to the XPT. So that specific video actually led to incredibly cool things because I got to go to Laird's house and train with them twice and bring the cameras and do all that. So you nailed it. So I'll take full credit for that. You're welcome. Thanks for being on camera and hanging out with us. I just did the real world ice bath. I hiked to an alpine lake. They had

big ice chunks floating around in it and I hopped in at Glacier National Park in Montana just last week. I don't know how that would compare to that tiny freezer in Gap in the backyard, but maybe almost as cool. What do you think? Almost as cool. Definitely better

scenery. Definitely better scenery yeah definitely better scenery well laird's house is pretty cool malibu's rad um lauren today on barbell stronger what are you talking about um probably i would like to even just say these the the large misconception that many of us in the fitness space and strength sports have had over the years of how we should be periodizing training on a monthly basis, really based off the phases of the menstrual cycle. And you just had a paper come out probably like two or three months ago now that got a ton of attention. And before we even dig into kind of like your new findings and that paper specifically, we have a relatively male audience. And I would love if we could just walk through what are those phases?

What are the characteristics of those phases? And that way we have like a, almost like a glossary of terms that we're able to kind of move through and what that looks like as we, as it relates to training as we move forward. Sounds good. So the menstrual cycle is characterized by fluctuations of a couple hormones. Primarily, we're talking about estradiol or estrogen and progesterone. And then around the ovulation time, we have a spike in luteinizing hormone. So I'll primarily talk about those three hormones. And during the beginning of the cycle, so when you start menstruating, all of the hormones are low. And then over the first week or two, estradiol starts to increase, but progesterone remains low.

So we'll call that pre-ovulation or the follicular phase. This is the first phase of the cycle. Then during ovulation, we have a spike in luteinizing hormone that is very short-lived. In some people, it can be a couple hours. In some people, it can be one or two days. And then in post-ovulation or the luteal phase, we see an increase in progesterone. And estradiol remains kind of moderately high, but it peaks pre-ovulation. So you get your highest estrogen levels right before ovulation in the follicular phase. And then you get kind of your highest levels of progesterone and moderately high estradiol in the luteal phase. And this will only apply to people who are human or yik. So if you're on any kind of hormonal contraceptive, this doesn't apply to you because you don't

have those natural hormonal fluctuations. And we can talk about that later if you'd like. Yeah. And kind of your history in strength training, obviously very strong. You hang out, you lift the weights. When people told you over and over again, over the years of you need to be periodizing each month based on these phases, was there something in the back of your brain that kind of led you towards diving deeper into this where what they were saying and what the results that you were getting or the training that you were doing or how you feeling just wasn't aligning, which made you want to actually dig deeper into this? When I started lifting and when I started coaching, this really wasn't something that was discussed very much. So I think that it's been more in recent years that it started to kind of become a topic of conversation, which is great. But when I got into the research game, I was

really interested in sex-based differences. And after kind of digging into those, the female sex hormones had been really underexplored, I'd say, whereas we know a lot about testosterone. We've been studying that for a very long time. And so I, I was interested in the potential effects of the, of the female sex hormones. And then, you know, it just kind of worked out that I have been doing this research and it's been increasingly becoming a hot topic, um, in social media and, and in the kind of personal training world. But I think it really started from wanting to study women, wanting to increase the representation of women in the resistance training literature, and then kind of honing in on a topic that we really don't know enough about and haven't studied extensively yet. Yeah. What was the, I was going to say, what are the, what are the claims being made kind

of primarily on social media that may or may not have a good scientific backing? Sure. So like I, like I said, in the first phase, the follicular phase, we start with low hormones and then we have increasing estradiol. So progesterone is kind of not a player in that first half. And the claim there is that estrogen is anabolic. And so perhaps your performance would be better, or perhaps your propensity for muscle growth and strength would be better because of the increase in estradiol. Whereas in the luteal phase, we have an increase in progesterone, and there's something catabolic supposedly about progesterone. And so during that phase, you should kind of back off the intensity. And I've

seen some recommendations that say you should do yoga and light stretching and you shouldn't lift weights at all. So it's become frustrating. Is that to you? I could like see it coming out of you. Just these old ways of thinking. You're like, Oh, just nails on chalkboard just thinking about it well it violates every principle we know about strength training okay i mean just to say oh yeah you should do this for two weeks and then not pick up a weight for two weeks how are you ever going to make any kind of progress um but i'll tell you where where it from, because it does come from a scientific place. There, when we start studying anything, we often look at cell models, and then we will find something interesting, progress to an animal model, find something interesting, progress to

a clinical trial in humans, you know, assuming that it's safe. And with the female sex hormones, the most commonly used model for studying them in animals is an overectomy. So you basically remove the hormones entirely. And you see kind of an on off switch, this is what's happening when we have the circulating sex hormones, we're and then this is what happens when we don't. So it's not really a human model because we never, even in menopause, it never shuts off. We have kind of a gradual decline, but that is the animal model. And it's a clean model because like I said, you can see this is what happens in the presence of these hormones. This is what happens in the absence of these hormones. This is what happens in the absence of these hormones. So there is some work that shows in satellite cells that are regulated to some

degree by these hormones. Shrug family, I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside-out approach.

So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation, sleep. Then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program. And we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs, the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that

has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com. And let's get back to the show. And when you give the rodent a supplementary hormone, like an injection of an estradiol equivalent, we start to see that come back. So what it tells you is that the absence of the hormone is potentially problematic for muscle regeneration. And that has been extrapolated to the idea that estrogen is anabolic. And those studies don't actually show that. They show that the lack of

estrogen is perhaps catabolic, but not that the presence of estrogen is anabolic. And it doesn't really tell us anything about progesterone. But because this assumption has been made that estrogen is anabolic, then we've taken it one step further to assume that, oh, well, progesterone is the opposite of estrogen and therefore it's catabolic with really no evidence to suggest that. We know very, very little about progesterone and muscle in cells and animals. That's a really kind of unknown area, but that's where the idea kind of unknown area but that's where the idea kind of stemmed from so the paper that you published refutes all this or or adds clarity in a more practical way what did you actually do training programs throughout someone's cycle and do like a comparison of different types of training programs um yeah so you're strength training some in settings? Sorry, go ahead.

The paper that came out a couple months ago is kind of an umbrella review of all of the literature that's currently published. And that includes looking at acute performance in kind of one phase or another. And there are a couple of studies that have tried to look at longer term, you know, eight, 12 week training program strength and hypertrophy outcomes. But remember that if we were even to assume that that estrogen is anabolic and progesterone is catabolic, there's still estrogen in the in the luteal phase in the second half of the cycle. And so that would mean that either that progesterone is so catabolic that it's counteracting the effects of estrogen. And then in the first half of the cycle, when we see the increase in estrogen, estrogen is only high for a few days, you know, and it's kind of slowly increasing. So that would mean that the antibiotic stimulus of estrogen is so

potent that just from those few days, there's, you know, magic to training throughout the cycle, when you kind of balance it out, the level on average in one phase and the other of estrogen is pretty much the same. So the real struggle with doing this research is that there's a ton of variability in humans. And so you might have heard or seen that the average cycle is 28 days, and then ovulation kind of falls right in the middle. So in that example, you have two weeks of one phase and two weeks of the other phase. But in actuality, there's a huge amount of variability. So a quote, normal cycle can be as short as 21 days, or as long as 35 days, and ovulation can kind of fall anywhere. So in some women, you actually have a follicular phase that's really long, and then they don't ovulate until let's say day 19 or 20. And then they have

a really short luteal phase. When you start to do hormone testing in women, you see that not only is the timing of the fluctuations different from one individual to the next, but also the magnitude of those fluctuations is huge. And so, you know, you can have the spike in luteinizing hormone be very small or very huge. And you can have the increase in estradiol be just a little bit of a bump, or it can look like a big spike. So there's so much variability that it's really difficult to compare one person to another person. So what we've kind of decided is a better practice is perhaps not

the most, you know, ecologically valid type of study design, but it would be to do a within subject design. So we're looking at, you know, you training one leg and then you training another leg, because then we can actually compare what happens in you as that one individual with your unique kind of cyclical fluctuations. Right. So you actually did do that, or you're saying that that's something that you are looking to do within subject design? Yeah, so I have done that. I actually don't have the data back yet. So we'll have to stay tuned. But essentially, what I did was I looked at the doing exercise bouts the week before ovulation. So that period when estrogen is the highest, and then I have the same person come back and do this the same protocol in the five days after

ovulation. So that's when we would see the highest progesterone, but also that the estradiol is kind of moderately high. And in our lab, we used stable isotope tracers, and we took biopsies. And I took bloods throughout, so I could really see that the changes in all of the three of the hormone levels. And so when I when I talk about the variability and cycle length and phase length and ovulation timing and all of that, that is definitely something that I've seen firsthand. And in the the paper that I published, has a pretty large section on methodological issues in the literature that's out there. And one of the big problems is that some of these authors just assumed, well, hey, on average, people have a 28 day cycle, and they ovulate on day 14.

So then you kind of put people into groups and run your study without actually verifying their hormone levels or when they actually ovulate. And so there's a huge assumption being made there that really diminishes the quality of the research. Is there anything to kind of like the fluctuations and energy levels, or maybe even in recovery, just based on what phase people are in or not people, what phase females are in? In, in general, like if, if I have a bad week of sleep or just energy is down, I'm probably not going to have the level of intensity that I would normally bring into training, um, which is also going to affect recovery. Um, but I don't have things like that just like built into my, normal monthly rhythm um are there different phases

where people should be just aware that recovery or or turning down tuning down the intensity um should be managed i'd say broadly speaking no but we should be aware that menstrual symptoms like cramps and bloating and fatigue are pretty common. There's literature that suggests about 75% of naturally cycling women will have those symptoms. And that could be a couple of days before your cycle starts, or it could be during the first couple of days of your cycle. And so I think it's important to be aware of that. And perhaps you might adjust the plan for that session. But we're talking about one or two sessions there. We're not talking about you know, adjusting half of month training. Gotcha. Are there any good examples of female athletes that that are that are kind of following the bro science method here of strength training training like you know for a couple weeks and then completely cutting off strength training that are

that rely on strength training for performance like a crossfit games athlete or a competitive weightlifter etc versus most athletes as far as i can tell being in those worlds for a long time they just they just train normal week in and week out. Yeah. I've never heard of any high level athlete doing this because, I mean, like I said, with everything we know about sound principles of resistance training, it just doesn't make any sense. So I don't see how you would be competitive if you trained like this, because you're basically talking about cutting your volume in half, maybe. And so that would not be something that, you know, I would recommend. And I don't think any strength coach would recommend that. But I think that this is more being marketed to your kind of beginner or intermediate trainee who is following somebody on Instagram or following an app. And then the coach is trying to market themselves as, you know, a female expert.

And so in my perspective, it's much more kind of a marketing shtick than anything else. Yeah. Um, yeah, I was, I was going to ask, uh, on the nutrition side of things, um, is there anything that people can do? Is it, or is it really just kind of the basic, uh, protein one, one gram per pound of body weight, and just kind of keeping those protocols the same throughout the month? Or are there any changes that they should make to their nutrition? There really isn't any evidence to suggest that we should be changing nutrition. I have seen some people say, oh, well, because progesterone is catabolic, during the luteal phase, you need to be eating even more protein. But that it's just, there's

no evidence to suggest that progesterone is catabolic. So you're kind of taking something that is made up and then adding a recommendation on top of that. So that's kind of the danger here because a lot of this information is being communicated in a way that it is based on scientific principles or based on research that is out there. And it's so, okay, you know, we know this to be true and therefore here are the recommendations. But if we don't know that to be true, then these recommendations are kind of bullshit. When we have multiple clients actually that I've spoken to who have had like an IUD and for multiple years and don't have menstrual cycles. If the idea that people should be changing their training based off of the

phases in their cycle, you would think that like half the population on an IUD that hasn't had their, they'd be walking around just like super jacked. And then everybody else would be doing half the training. Um, have there been any studies of people, uh, females that are on birth control that, um, really they don't have their menstrual cycle over very long periods of time. And then comparing that to non-birth control females. Yeah. So with people who are on hormonal contraceptives, it essentially lowers all of their endogenous hormone production. So they don't experience

those fluctuations that I described earlier. You kind of have a stable low level of all of that. And then for the most common pill regimen would be three weeks on and then one week off. And so you have what is like a withdrawal bleed, but it's not actually a menstrual period. And when you when you look at their adaptations to training, there are a couple of studies that show being on birth control is better. And a couple of studies that show that being on birth control is a little bit worse, but by a very, very minor margin. And so it's, there really isn't any wholesale evidence to say, oh, yeah, you know, you shouldn't or should be on one birth control or another. And then it this is further complicated by the different formulations of the pills. And so you can get a pill that is a,

as a combination of a synthetic estrogen and a synthetic progesterone, you can get one that is progesterone only. But you'd also think that, or you can have, as you said, an IUD, which is a progesterone, generally, exclusively. And so if there was something so catabolic about progesterone generally exclusively and so if there was something so catabolic about progesterone then we would likely see all these people who are taking exogenous like synthetic progesterone then you know they wouldn't be able to grow muscle at all theoretically right and we don't see that um you think the majority of the professional athletes out there that are in their 20s that are trying to go to the olympics or or be a world champion are probably on some form of birth of birth control i would i don't know what the percentage would be there but if

they're trying to go to the olympics they're probably trying to also not get pregnant at the same time they're trying to push that off until after they get their medals so to speak so uh if that was the case all those people would be shooting themselves in the foot, right? That's right. Yeah. I mean, about half of the, of the like female premenopausal population is on some form of hormonal contraceptive. So the most common is the pill, but then there, there are IUDs and there's like an implant, you can take a shot. So there are other forms, but it's hugely prevalent. And the other advantage of doing that for an athlete is that they don't get kind of surprised by their cycle. Some athletes have irregular cycles. And if there are, there are some that will stay on

the pill all the time and never kind of come off of it and take and have the withdrawal bleed. And that is a convenience thing, right? Because having your period when you're competing is inconvenient. And there are, it also can alleviate some of those menstrual symptoms, like the bad cramping and the bloating and all of that. And so some people will take the pill for that reason, in addition to, you know, for contraceptives. I actually thought about all that this weekend, knowing that we were going to interview you and I was watching the CrossFit Games and the women are such gangsters.

Like they're such badasses. I love watching it. And then I literally was looking at my schedule going, Oh, Lauren's going to be on here. And then I thought watching them, I went 25% of the people that I'm watching on this TV right now are probably in the middle of the menstrual cycles and they don't care. I mean, they probably care and wish it was different, but like, they're just out there getting after it. Nobody in that nobody's standing on that floor is going feeling bad for themselves and going, Oh, well, this is my built in excuse. It's not my week.

No. And when you look at survey data where people say, yeah, I have these symptoms, they usually occur here and here. This is what they are. Then the follow up question is, do you change your training because of this? And almost nobody says yes. So the reality is that, you know, you women are used to having to just deal with all sorts of daily life tasks and you're not going to say, Oh, I won't show up for that meeting or I can't travel today or you just kind of suck it up and move on. And so I think if you're a serious athlete, people tend to take that approach. But I do say if you're somebody who is working with a client who feels like they have a terrible training session for those couple of days where they have terrible cramps, then sure, you know, have a plan B, but I would liken that to having some kind of measure of, of, um, auto-regulating your training that you would implement if you were tired or jet lagged or hungover or whatever.

Right. Um, this one may fall into like some of my own ignorance because I do not have a period, which actually I talked to a lady and I sent her a podcast that we did on the menstrual cycle. And she goes, this kind of sounds like a bunch of guys talking about something they don't have, which maybe right now, my little caveat. For athletes that are, call them 20 to 25 years old, and then say like a

master's athlete that is 45 to 50 years old. Are there any differences in kind of like even just the physiology of the human between being young and able to recover much faster and probably being more like fresh to like all of the hormonal changes that are going on and those monthly cycles compared to somebody that's probably heading towards menopause and towards the end of this kind of phase of life. Are there any differences between those two athletes outside of the obvious, like one's 20 years older? Yeah, that population is really hard to study because people hit that perimenopause phase at different times. So it's, it's really difficult to recruit people who are kind of in the same place at the same time. But that I think is probably the more interesting question, because when you,

the hormones start to decline, when you start to get either fewer cycles, and eventually you, you don't get a cycle at all, then I think that the animal model research that I described earlier might become relevant. And so you're, and we see that women are losing muscle, and the ability to maintain muscle is more difficult when you are in the menopausal stage. And there, there's some research looking at hormone replacement therapy, and the potential influence of that to kind of attenuate those losses. But that is an area that I think is really ripe for, for exploration because that population is going to be more susceptible to losing muscle mass and bone mineral density as well. Yeah. I know you said, sorry, sorry i know i know you said for strength

training for protein intake there's really no reason to make any any big changes for any particular phase uh of the cycle but is there are there any other things where you actually would want to be proactive and make any adjustments like for hydration or or sleep or any supplements you can take during different phases or is there anything in any aspect of health, fitness, wellness that you might want to consider that's not strength training or protein to take? At this point, I would say there isn't enough evidence to make any recommendations about any of that because the other kind of basic building blocks of what we know about training and nutrition are going to supersede any minor influence of of hormone fluctuation

and so we're we're just not in a place where we would make any kind of broad recommendation um that it that's phase specific but of course this is research that is very, you know, it's ongoing, and it's being conducted in a variety of spaces. And so it's possible that over time, with more high quality research in bigger populations, we would be able to see that there is something to this. But until then, we'd be jumping the gun to make any kind of recommendation. Yeah. We've been talking a lot about how kind of the menstrual cycle would affect your performance in the gym. If we were to kind of flip that question in the reverse way, are there, you know, whether it's intensities, um, types of training,

like if you were doing CrossFit, it's significantly different, um, kind of stimulus than, than like a, a bro split bodybuilding routine and the intensities there, um, where those levels of intensity actually do start to affect your menstrual cycle instead of the other way around, like we've been talking about? Yeah. So usually that would be athletes who get into a state of low energy availability. So people who are exercising a ton and under fueling and that for, for those people, the menstrual cycle can be one of the first signs or sorry, the loss of cycle can be one of the first signs that, you know, something isn't right and that you might be under fueling yourself, given the, particularly if you're in a space where there's either kind of a physique component to, um, or a performance component to being at a lower body weight than maybe is optimal for you physiologically. So we see it in dancers,

uh, figure skaters, um, endurance athletes and, uh, in the, in the bodybuilding community as well, because you're, you're trying to be so lean intentionally for a physique purpose, or you're trying to keep your, your body weight down for, um, and it's one thing to do that for a competition. You know, if you're trying to make a weight class or something, but if you're really staying there, um, in for long-term or, or, um, kind of cyclically putting yourself in that position, then you are likely to lose your menstrual cycle and it can down regulate a whole bunch of other physiological systems as well. Yeah. Um, if we were to pan out a little bit and really look at, um at the research as a whole on females in strength training, where do you feel like a lot of the, we've had you right now, Dr. Abby Smith-Ryan on, and I know Galpin on many shows has talked about how there's such a need for us to understand and just get more females into the exercise science and exercise phys world. Where do you feel like that side of this industry

is headed? Obviously, you putting this paper out created lots of attention in your direction. And there's many people doing it. But where do you feel like a lot of the new areas that need to be understood are going to be in the future? I think we've come a long way in starting to include more female participants. One of the reasons that I wanted to answer this research question is that because of the potential kind of unknown influence of the menstrual cycle, it's one of the reasons why women are often excluded because it's just easier to study men and then you don't have to worry about it. And if the cycle does affect performance or does affect training induced adaptations,

then let's come up with some best practices for researchers to include women and do it properly. If it doesn't, then let's not worry about it. And then we can open the door to people being more willing to research women because trying to have people track their cycles and track their ovulation and measure their hormones isn't something that is feasible for a lot of labs. Some of them don't have the funds to do that. And so, like I said, the default is just, oh, we don't want to bother with that. So let's just study men. And so my hope is that we will do enough of this science to either say, you know what, it doesn't matter. Let's include women. And if hormonal contraceptives don't matter either,

hey, we can include women who are having a normal menstrual cycle. We can include women who are on contraceptives and that's, we don't have to kind of account for that as being a potential confounding variable. Yeah, that's really interesting. I like seeing the bigger vision there. If you can more or less accomplish that and then using females as participants in studies becomes much easier, more budget friendly, et etc. What are the holes right now that you feel like need to be filled in the world of science and performance, where females are just understudied? Sounds like there's a lot of them. But do you have any, any particular areas that you're like, passionate about that you really want to see how how females

do regarding, you know, muscle fiber testing or whatever it is? As I mentioned before, the issues with kind of low energy availability, or you might have heard the term red S, and that is a big problem in the female athlete community. And so I think the more that we learn about that, the more that we could kind of develop best practices for athletes who do need to go to those extremes to accomplish a, you know, a athletic goal, because right now, all we know is, hey, this is really problematic, like pretty quickly when you're in the state of low energy availability. And so it influences muscle protein synthesis, it influences metabolism, it down regulates the whole endocrine system. It disrupts reproductive functioning. It makes you more susceptible to stress fractures because of, so there, there is definitely room to explore that and figure out, hey, this is how we can make this, um, at, you know, not harmless, but minimize the harm that the athletes are doing to themselves by whether that's frequency of competition or whether

that's how you're prepping and the length of your, of your diet or the, or the how aggressive your deficit is, there, there are a lot of kind of unknowns there in terms of being able to frame guidelines. And then on the flip side, coming out of that and saying, Okay, how do we get ourselves back to a state of healthy physiological functioning as quickly as possible, and do some kind of practical testing along the way, whether that's using the menstrual cycle coming back as one of the signs that things are starting to function better or whether that's using blood work. There is definitely room to explore that and put female athletes in a better position, not only to be more competitively successful, but also just to take care of themselves in the long term.

Doesn't your paper accomplish like a massive chunk of this and just being able to to show that no matter what phase of the month they are in, we don't need to worry about it. We can just go do the science. And moving forward, there's a paper that now says women should be included in all of this. And we don't have to worry about blood tests every week to find out the phase and all of the tiny details. Let's just hit the go button and start doing it. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And what we've learned from our journey with testosterone, for example, is that we thought, you know, wow, this is super important. And we're focusing on kind of the boost in testosterone that you get after a workout. Or there was a thought that if you have higher T,

then you're going to have a higher propensity for gaining muscle mass and strength. And we have over the past 20 years or so finally come to a place where you say, hey, then, you know, quote, normal physiological range for testosterone is huge when you compare one person to another person. And so what's normal for one of you might not be quote normal for you. But as long as you're in that range, then there really isn't a relationship that that says, Oh, you know, yours is objectively higher, and therefore you're going to be able to get bigger and stronger. Of course, when we start looking at exogenous testosterone and injecting hormones, then of course it's an advantage. But in the normal physiological range, we don't see a relationship there.

And so I'm hoping that we'll be able to take a similar journey with the female sex hormones and come to a place where we say, if one hormone was super anabolic, then we would see the people who have the highest increases in that hormone are getting way stronger or way more muscular. And we don't see that at all. And so my hope is that we will start to kind of put the nail in the coffin in terms of the science and then really educate the public, whether it's fitness enthusiasts, athletes, coaches, to say there are so many things that athletes will do to really optimize their performance, optimize their training, optimize their recovery. And as an elite athlete, you can and probably should do all of those things. But worrying about where you are in your cycle just isn't one of them. Even if you have all the resources to track everything. How many people and part of the process in the peer review is that people go and redo the experiment that you ran, correct? Not necessarily. I mean, that's part of the scientific process, ideally, is that, you know, science should be replicable. And so if we can see the same results over time,

you know, you see that with something that like creatine, there's so many studies on creatine, it's really the state of that evidence is very clear. We're not there yet. With this research question. And the main reason for that is because it's really, really complicated to do well, because you do have to do all of the tracking, you have to make sure that you know exactly when that person ovulates, you do have to measure their hormones multiple times. And like, you have to do all of that. And I haven't even described what the study is yet. So additionally, you have to schedule all the training. And so there, as somebody who has done this research i understand why people don't want to do it totally well we even in even in the labs that we run on a lot of people we were having some of our

female employees do the daily spit tests and it's a mess yeah people don't want to go and do the same thing at the exact same time every single day into all these little tubes. It's so hard. And when you're trying to track ovulation, you can use these urine strips. People use it primarily for fertility purposes, but that's what we do in the lab. And so you send them home and say, okay, you know, take the pee on the strip and then it measures the luteinizing hormone. So that is indicative of ovulation. And there are some women whose ovulation timing is so short that you can miss it based on when they take the test throughout the day. And if you miss it, you have to wait a whole other cycle and do it again. So just the logistics of this are very challenging. What is the, what's the next big paper you're working on right now?

So the research I described that I'm still finalizing my data analysis, it's done. I've done that study with the menstrual cycle phase, and I did it in another cohort with oral contraceptive users during the active pill phase. And then during the week where you don't take the pill or where you take like a sugar pill placebo. And so looking at muscle protein synthesis in both of those phases as well. So I should be finishing up the data analysis in the next month or so, which is really exciting. And so I should be finishing up the data analysis in the next month or so, which is really exciting. And so I should have those papers hopefully coming out by the end of the year, early next year. Very cool.

People want to work with you, learn more. Where do they find you? Instagram, LaurenCS1. Love it. Thanks for coming to hang out with us. Thanks. That was fun. No, I haven't seen you in so long. i wish we didn't have to do this on zoom we need to uh where do you live now i'm in don't do

your address on barbell whoa stop it that's not what i was looking for i know yeah i'm um i go 45 minutes away from toronto but probably not permanently. I'm looking to come back maybe next year. So I'm just here to do some good science. I love it. Are you still in California? No, we had children and had to leave. Never, never land.

That's what happens when you have them. You have to give up all the fun things in life so that you can be a parent, be closer to home. so i have free babysitters that makes sense just a little 18 year 18 year break no big deal then i get to go back to my life um doug larson where can the people find you you bet uh douglas c larson on instagram lauren appreciate you coming on the show this is very nice that it's so clean cut. It's just, don't worry about it.

That's basically the summary of this whole thing was like, forget about all the nuance. Just don't worry about it. Just go train, go eat right, go sleep, go do your thing, be an athlete, and don't worry about it. That's right. There you go.

Love it. Especially for all you guys listening, like obviously if you're a guy, this is not affecting you personally, but presumably many, many, many coaches listen to this show and you coach female athletes and you mentor females. there is some kind of hate whenever men talk about this from the internet, but I don't really understand why, because if these people want more science in the area, the vast majority of exercise science researchers are men. So we need the men on board to get more studies on women. I'm on board it's when uh i laughed very hard when our client was like

yeah sounded like a bunch of guys talking about something they didn't know about i was like i kind of know i'm like a i'm like a bystander to it every month like i'm also trying to learn about it which is a good thing we're trying to learn about it well that's right yeah i mean you we can talk about elite athletes i'm not an elite athlete yeah so what difference what difference does it make you know i mean i liken it to saying you can't do cancer research unless you've had cancer look at that yeah that i hope she's still listening right now i'm anders varner at anders varnerarner, and we are Barbell Shrugged to Barbell underscore shrugged. Make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com.

That is where Dr. Andy Galpin and Doug Larson, Dan Garner are doing a lab lifestyle and performance analysis that everybody inside Rapid Health Optimization will receive. You can access that at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.