The Truth About Muscle and Menopause: What Every Woman Needs to Know About the Science Data

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Hello, hello, you're in for a treat. And do I look different? I'm a new grandma and I am broadcasting from like a basement. This is, I think, the man cave of my son while I'm here helping them settle into new parenthood. So bear with me. The number one, the audio is not going to be as wonderful as it normally is. My hope is that it is adequate for you. We'll run it through all post-production, but heads up, I wanted give you that message before we even dive in. When I have questions about muscle protein or muscle protein synthesis, my go-to is Dr. Stuart Phillips, and he is here to answer questions, to look at a few myths that are going around in circles that you and I are in and where we're listening to what is it that we should really be doing, what really matters, and what doesn't on social social media. Stay tuned for this episode.

I'm Debra Atkinson, and you're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness and menopause and beyond before you know to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with the science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. It's not just you, but it's the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy you want, need, and deserve.

You're in for a treat today. So one of my most favorite returning guests is joining me, Dr. Stuart Phillips. Dr. Phillips, just as a reminder is a distinguished university professor in the Department of Kinesiology and a member of the School of Medicine at McMaster University. He's a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Skeletal Muscle Health. No wonder he's here with us. Dr. Phillips' work centers on the interaction of exercise, physical activity, aging, and nutrition in skeletal muscle and body composition. Dr. Phillips is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American College of Sports Medicine and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. I asked him a battery of questions, and hopefully you won't feel like this is jumping and leaping from subject to subject, but when we have the best of the best and the top, we want to ask all of the most important questions. I hope I covered your questions for you in this episode. I can't wait for you to listen. Welcome back, Dr. Stuart Phillips.

Thanks for having me, Debra. Pleasure to see you again.

Well, you too. And to all of our listeners, Dr. Phillips is no stranger to this show, and my hope is that this won't be his last. It's not his first, but let's hope it won't be his last. I know you're a little bit more busy now with the new role. It actually gave us for concern. I was like, no, you're not going to do that because we need you doing the research.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's— the research hasn't stopped. It just meant that somebody else plans a lot of my day and tells me what I need to do and where I need to be. But it's all good. The research is still rolling along. So all good.

To all of my listeners who may have been living under a rock, maybe not exploring protein or muscle and longevity for as long as I have, tell them how you got your start because here's the truth. Protein and when muscle and resistance training for aging is talked about, your name is whispered in the room and quickly found in a study. Which happened first? Where did it begin?

Yeah, I mean, if I trace it all the way back, I mean, I did my undergraduate here at McMaster University, but I actually did it in biochemistry. So I was sort of trained a lot more in kind of understanding what It was on inside cells rather than human physiology. And it wasn't until my senior year when I took a course in nutritional biochemistry and I was like, wow, this is amazing. And I had the opportunity to work in a lab, not by choice. I broke my leg playing rugby of all things. And so couldn't play rugby. And so had this time to get into a lab and just fell in love with research and at each twist and turn when it was time to decide master's to a PhD, PhD to a postdoc, I was like, I'm having too much fun doing this. And it gradually morphed into— first it was protein requirements in men and women with endurance athletes, and then I found a mentor that taught me all about muscle and sort of blended a lot of my worlds. I enjoyed sports and athletics and then got the nutritional side. And yeah, it's, you know, that was almost 35 years ago now. So yeah, it's— and it's been great ever since. I enjoy it, still enjoy every day of it.

Well, I think the amazing part about what you said is, you know, the almost 35 years, you've seen a lot of changes. And very recently, I mean, you're a regular on podcasts, which we all need to stop and thank you for, because it's not as if you just have time that you're looking to do things with and you're bored. You, you are in demand. You've got things, things to do. But because you've seen so many changes, I think you can understand where many of our listeners probably are. They've also seen changes, they've heard them, they've been conditioned now potentially more by social media. And, and that's really where I want to dive in. That, for this interview, I think is where I started chasing you down because I noticed that it seemed like you changed in terms of posting. I would almost say it feels like you're mad.

Oh yeah, maybe social media can make you mad, let's face it, right? But you know, hopefully it doesn't drive you crazy. So that's— I, I've been trying to sort of turn down the the craziness thing and just, you know, keep it, you know, uh, sort of middle of the road. And I'm like, no, I'm not engaging with that. But you could engage every day on social media for sure, right?

Well, and I— what I want to point out is it feels like you're, um, kind of angry because you're in the corner of this consumer and you want to be sure they get served the right information in order to for all of us to be in the encouraging corner, to enable people to get started and not to be intimidated. And when you started, when I started, the statistics unfortunately are not much better. We're not doing a great job penetrating people who need it, right?

No, I agree. I, I mean, I think, uh, you and I probably know— I mean, it seems to me like there's a lot of war on social media over scorched earth. There's a lot of, you know, how can we refine prescriptions for protein? How can we refine prescriptions for resistance training? When I point out to a lot of people is that 80% or more, because all we have is self-report, of women don't lift any weights at all. So, there's a big market that's out there to be tapped. And for them, it's the engagement and the activity per se as opposed to lift heavy, lift this weight, lift too midday. There's refinement of details which I'm happy to chat about, but the bigger battle to me is convincing women because for so long, and I think it still exists today, you go over to the student gym like right over here, there's the aerobics area and it's mostly that's where the women are and there's the lifting area and that's where you find most of the guys. Now, it's changed. It's shifting. But stereotypically, it's been, well, to control my weight, to do this, this is an aerobic-based activity that I need to do. And I think now we appreciate that to be strong, particularly for women as they get older, I actually think it's not unimportant or relatively important to cardiovascular fitness, which you need too. But I think it actually, as you age, it actually gets even more important, particularly for women. So, yeah, that's a message I've been— so, live and let live is the ethos, right? Like, let's get people lifting weights and then we'll worry about the fine-tuning of the details.

Yeah, totally agree. So, let's jump in. There's probably this small handful of myths and I think confusion that women are worried about. And I do think even women who aren't started yet, you know, are way ahead of themselves worrying about details that may not matter as much. Because let's face it, when you're a virgin, I mean, you can hold hands and that's great, right?

Yeah.

And so if we can look at exercise, let's first of all talk about kind of this lift heavy piece. So light, moderate, heavy weights, how do they stack up in terms of— and we could break this into how do they stack up in terms of helping build muscle mass and/or muscle strength?

Right. So, you and I have talked about this before and I think the research now, like it's the guidelines that the NSCA talks about, the guidelines that any agency has to talk about. And I can say fingers crossed that ACSM soon because we're part of writing up these advised guidelines will have to say that lighter weights and everybody goes like, "What's light and what's heavy?" So, the traditional heavier prescription has been 80% of what you can maximally lift at one time lifted to close to fatigue. So, 8 to 10 to maybe 12 repetitions work that not that we did, lots of people have done it, but maybe we sort of ground the axle quite a bit on it with lighter weights finishing in the sort of 20+ repetitions has the same effect on muscle in terms of muscle growth. So, if you want to preserve muscle, if you want to gain muscle, the repetition range that we now consider to be effective is much, much wider than it used to be. It used to be this was the sweet spot, but that's not true. Now, the strength piece is is a little different because strength is a function not just of muscle growth but of what you practice as well. So, if you're lifting at 80% of 1RM, you're only 20% away from your 1RM. If you're lifting at 50%, you're 50% away. So, you get better at what you practice doing. So, 80% will always make you stronger if we use the 1RM test to show how strong you are. But what we have shown and we're right in the middle of a huge study on women, so hopefully, we'll show you the same thing pretty soon, is that when you give people a chance to practice lifting heavy weights, they get good at lifting heavy weights. And so, if you want strength, definitely lift heavy things, but muscle growth happens or mitigation of loss happens at a very wide repetition of ranges that I don't think was appreciated as much But the guidelines, they have to change on this because the evidence is now— I mean, I think it's, it's irrefutable, to be honest with you.

So good. And I think for so many women in midlife, one of the things that we do know with estrogen declines is that trainers for years have seen this. I think physical therapists and chiropractors did, and we didn't have a name for it, but we would see much more frequency of injury. And some of those lingering and staying on. And I think such good news for women, you know, everybody needs to start light. And why are we talking about heavy knowing the best way to start is light anyway and to progress your way up? And some of us are going to say, no, I have to stop here. Here's my place. This is my box. And others may continue and or choose to or choose not to. And yet, now we've defined I still have a lot of ways I can manipulate the weight, maybe more time under tension, not necessarily going heavier or adding power, a speed component. And I still can achieve what I want.

Yeah, no, you're spot on. And I think one of the things that's maybe confused people is that Progression is necessary. If you start out and you find lifting 5-pound weights difficult but then you get stronger and you're like, "Oh, I can do lots of this," then you're not going to continue to get the benefit and the adaptation if you keep lifting 5-pound weights, right? So, I think that everybody says, "Well, you need progressive overload," and they underline the word load. So, the progression is always sort of taken to be I need to add more load. And not that that's a great way to progress. So, you go from 5 to 10 and then you find that really challenging. So, maybe you're to 7.5, I don't know, but you could progress it by training twice a week if you're only training once. I mean, that's another form of just stimulating the system a little bit more and you will get adaptation with that. Now, most people are like, "Oh, I don't have the time." I'm like, "Okay, fine." So, load is the one thing that we have. But, if you can't progress, you can't keep progressing. I mean, there's always sort of a cap, a limit. Even when you were younger, you got to a point where strength plateaued and you just couldn't lift anymore. And, I think most people find that they get to a certain weight that if they try to lift heavier that, yeah, and it's not so much their muscle, they go, "My joint hurts, my elbow, my wrist, my shoulder, my hip, my knee." I'm in that camp me too. So, don't get me wrong, there's no shame in that at all. So, back it off. And, the training goal for a lot of people who are taking up weightlifting maybe a little bit later in life, haven't done it, is actually to keep training because if there's one thing that definitely predicts future success and reduced risk of everything, it's consistency of practice. And so, if that's the message, then by all means, do everything within your power so you can come back and do it again, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely next week or a little bit later in the week. And it's a habit that sustains itself. And that's a tough one to master if you've never done it before, for sure.

Yeah, that was a great comment right there, by the way, maybe not tomorrow, because I wanted to ask you about that. So frequently you're asked about heavy, light, You know, how many repetitions? But, you know, I've not heard you asked a lot about recovery. And yeah, we're talking to a group of women. And one of the reasons I heard is when we reached a point where we've got 1,000 women regularly in, yeah, collectively, again, this wasn't an if, it was a when are these women going to reach a point of kind of an adrenal fatigue. And I know that's a lay term that not a lot of people like, but it's, you know, life is throwing them everything in the middle of their life. The hormones change, they're trying to exercise, trying to diet. It's all— they hit a point where we're exhausting them by exercise. Even what is a good amount of exercise is a tip.

Yeah.

And recovery sometimes takes longer than it did premenopause. Speak into that a little bit.

Yeah, uh, yeah, it's like a lot to unpack there, but I mean, I, I think that, you know, the point I make to athletes when I'm talking to the, the young men and women at the university campus here is that I tell them, all the training you're doing, that's awesome because that's forcing the adaptation. But I said, all the good stuff happens actually when you're not training, when you're you're recovering and you're eating right and you're sleeping right and everything else like this. And they all sort of nod. And I don't know that they really get it until, like, a little later in life. And there's, you know, you've got kids, you've got a job, you've got all of these things that are co-pressuring you, and you're trying to find time, trying to make time and everything else. And power to you if you can, because it's an amazing juggling act to pull all that stuff off. And then, I think for women and again, no lived experience but having a partner who actually scientifically and career-wise beats me hands down. She's my boss's boss at work here. So, just to give you a chance to know where she sits in the ladder, right? Watching her go through menopause and sort of just taking stock of the toll it takes on your sleep, your mood, just your general brain space to find time to do— well, forget anything, organize your day maybe for some folks. So, I think when you put all of that together and you're looking at a body that's changing and you're thinking, "I don't want this weight gain. I don't want to—" So, you're just going to you're going to do more or you're going to jump in and do something that you never would have considered doing before. And, it must be impossible, I think, for some women to find the time and energy to do all of that stuff. And, I'll be honest with you, Debra, you and I, I was on social media and I was putting some stuff out there and I said, "Well, here's the data on hormone replacement therapy or what menopause hormone therapy we call now." and what it does to lean mass and it doesn't do anything. And you said, "It might give some women the space." And I was like, "You know what? That's an interesting thought." And again, hand on heart, never occurred to me, but you're right, the alleviation, the mitigation of the symptoms associated with menopause. And the truth is that I I don't disagree, but that study's never actually been done. And I think it would actually be great to do something really simple and just say women on or not on receiving menopause hormone therapy, and are women better able to cope with things to find time for exercise? So the hormone therapy is an enabler of the activity. And so, We've got a local obstetrician gynecologist who is really interested in this. We're trying to get her on board with exercise as part of it. She's a believer, but she's sort of like she's frontline on the hormone side to say, you know what, let's see what this does for women because you get symptom relief and maybe that's what gives you the mental. And I think sleep is Actually, I think it's critical because just poke somebody every 2 hours and blow hot heat on them and make them sweat, forget about it. And then, wake them up 4 times or 5 times in the night and then the next day say, "So, you ready to work out?" You're like, "Well, you're getting the hand signal and it's not a pleasant one, right?" And so, I said to you I'm like, this happened to men, we'd have commissioned a global panel to solve this. We would— there will be stop the press. We got to solve this shit, you know. So power to the women out there who are saying, you know, enough, this is it. We've got to figure this stuff out. So it's time for sure.

Well, and to that effect, I mean, what is there in the data to say, do women if we just collectively look at women in menopause, do they lose more muscle mass than expected compared to men, men aging same range?

Yeah. Uh, you know, my take on that is no. Uh, and I mean, all we have is longitudinal observational data. So we've, we've got scans of women who did DEXA scans, you know, in their forties and most women, 95% of women are losing their menstrual cycle between the ages of 45 and 55. So, a decade's worth of aging. And, everybody wants to know when sarcopenia starts. And, the truth is on a population level, we've got data to show that for most people, it probably starts in your 30s. And, I know everybody goes crazy when I say that, but they're like, "Not me." And, I'm saying, I didn't say everybody, but on a population that's where things start to go down. And, it's kids' job, activity takes a backseat, maybe you weren't lifting before, plus you had done this sort of, I call it the hormonal honeymoon when you were younger and you could seemingly eat just whatever you wanted, you could probably drink whatever you wanted and nothing really changed. Your body was in great shape and you kind of bounced back and then all of a sudden, life throws you a curveball and a few other stressors and you're like, Wow, like I don't feel like doing that anymore and it's really tough. Anyway, coming back to the question, the long and short is that when we look at this longitudinal data, we don't see what you would expect, this sort of inflection point of muscle mass. We have a lot of lean mass data that shows that it's a pretty linear decline between 45 and 55 for populations. Of women. And if that's the case, then it's not muscle mass that's being lost disproportionate to the loss of the estrogen stimulus, but probably just aging and inactivity, to be honest with you. Yeah.

Which is, I think, back to the, the prior question for, you know, for a lot of women, it, it doesn't, they feel like, well, this isn't me. I didn't, that didn't happen to me. But then there's the other women that but I can't sleep and I can't remember where I left the keys. Yeah. And so they're in that status. Okay. You barely touched on cardiovascular. And I think my listeners, many of them, they grew up in their young adulthood with Jane Fonda and mostly a little bit of weight and Yeah, yeah, yeah. The thing we've all heard about since Dr. Peter Attia's book came out is zone 2 training, zone 2 training. Before we dive into zone 2 training, would you describe it in your words what it feels like instead of blatantly saying zone 2 without anybody understanding? What do we mean?

Well, I think what we call zone 2, before we called it zone 2, which is a recent term, we call that sort of an easy day. So, if you were running or if you were cycling or whatever, there would be days where we would call them threshold workouts where you would push close to that sort of envelope where if you went a little bit faster, you would blow up. And so, you get threshold training or you come close to that. Those are tough to do, they're tough to recover from. So, if you were to get back on the bike or go for a run the next day or if you went to the track and ran intervals or something or you were on the bike and you did intervals, the next day was you kind of back things off and probably it would be close to Zone 2 training. It should feel relatively easy to do. It shouldn't feel like you're breathing hard. I don't know if the conversation test is a great gauge, but you should be able to talk and maybe not like the conversation we're having, but You should be able to speak like this and you shouldn't be breathless. And so, there's a sort of subjective feeling that it's definitely easier than that hard day. I don't know if I can tell you exactly because lots of people define it in different ways, but it should feel relatively easy and that you could manage this. And, it's something that you could do for, I'd say, at least 30 minutes, but probably up to an hour or more.

Is that particularly beneficial for women in menopause as opposed to anyone else?

Yeah. Well, you know, it's all relative, right? I mean, if you're doing nothing, it's great. If you're doing maybe something, then the benefits of it are maybe debatable. But, you know, coming back to this idea of balancing periods of high intensity, which really push yourself and you need a recovery day. And a recovery day, just to be again, to say it out loud, it's okay to take a day where you don't exercise. Don't get me wrong. If you feel like I'm spent, like I'm absolutely tapped out, I had a crummy sleep and everything, why— and a lot of people, "Oh, I have to get into the gym." And I'm like, I don't get— I'm one of those people too. So, bear with me. But, on the days where I feel like that, I don't push it. If it says on the calendar, this is drop the hammer day and you slept like hell and you're not feeling great, then I don't do it because the mantra now is live to exercise another day, right? So, the event horizon is a long ways into the distance. So, I mix in zone 2 training all the time. I think women should sort of bear that in mind. There's definitely, "Oh, it does nothing for you." That's the one thing I hear. And, I'm like, "That's categorically incorrect." Is it the solution to everybody? No. If you don't do that high-end stuff, you lose the top gear. So, one day a week or every 2 weeks, you got to push it so that you feel like I'm I'm breathless at the end and that's not zone 2. So, yeah, it has its functions, but it's definitely not, you know, zone 2 is useless, you get nothing from it.

And that's not true either. Yeah, great comments. And, you know, I think for a lot of women, that's a great starting point. It's like if you're trying to develop a habit to get moving and you want less intimidating than, than going to the gym and where, where you feel like a foreigner, or getting out of breath makes you anxious. You know, this is a great story. Um, so I'm glad you spoke about breathlessness. I was going to ask you that as the next question, so we're, we're good there. But I, I do want to ask you something specific about a very trendy topic, and right now weighted vests are having a moment, and then they're in and out of this continuum of love-hate relationship. What's your take on weighted vests?

Hey, this is Debra Atkinson. I love creating the Flipping 50 podcast for you, and I have for over a decade. I also love helping midlife women shift not only their physical energy, but their beliefs about what effective exercise looks like and how much it can positively and powerfully impact your life. How you menopause and exercise in menopause determines how you will live, not just now, but decades from now. If you're not exercising right now, you're getting tired, not stronger, or you think you don't have time or the energy to exercise, do a 5-day flip with me. I'll send you one short video a day for 5 days. It's just 15 to 20 minutes long, so you can see exactly how I plan out a fitness plan for myself and for thousands of clients I've worked with. You can get this at flipping50.com right now.

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My take on weighted vests is, you know, if you like wearing a weighted vest, and, and it does— like, if it, you know, uh, I mean, every woman who's been pregnant will ever tell you, uh, you know, and there's a lab where we used to— there's a a colleague of mine, they strap on a sort of a device that simulates adding about 20 pounds right in the front of your belly. You say, "Now, go walk on the treadmill." And man, it's hard work, right? Now, that's a sudden gain of weight as opposed to the gradual, but it's a challenge, right? And add more weight, it doesn't have to be a lot, things feel tougher. And so, as a way to challenge yourself in a workout, I have no issue with that. I think there's a little bit of overpromising of benefit and underdelivering of benefit when we look at the data. And the biggest one is you're going to lose weight wearing a weighted vest. And I'm like, it's a small nudge in terms of energy expenditure that for some people, if they're diligently following their energy intake because you've got to nudge one greater than the other, so expenditure over intake, it can lead to weight loss, but it's not the answer to weight loss. At the same time, I see a lot of people talking about bone density. And, you know, I've been vocal in my establishment of the idea that lower intensities as well as heavier weights are beneficial for bone, but the weighted vest comes down into a zone where it's very difficult to imagine that that weight on a consistent basis, you know, while you're walking, for example, or running or hiking or anything, will do something for your bones. And I think several people more recently have been on social media and corrected the course for women. And because the truth is that the data on weighted vests and bones is underwhelming and I wouldn't look for it to improve bone density. If you like to wear them, awesome. I have no issues with it at all. Just let's be real about what we think is going to happen when you wear this thing. So, I see lots of women wearing them and I'm like, "Power to you. You're out there, you're doing your thing and you've got the vest on." I'm like, Awesome. But don't expect a miracle. And the bone one is the one I say, you know what, you got to seriously get inside the research and somebody's got to interpret it correctly. And when you do that, the effects on bone are a real thin slice if there's anything at all.

You just touched on something that I don't want to step over because I think, you know, this came out several months ago. I know you were you were kind of breaking down good research. Number one, I think everybody needs to understand just going to PubMed, which we all thought was a better idea, you know, that doesn't ensure you that every journal is peer-reviewed. Then if we're looking at what kind of studies are really the kind of studies that we want to bank on, that really tell us this, this is something to pay attention to. Can you just give everybody maybe a 101 on what should you be asking when something says science-backed or— Yeah.

Like I'll flat out say for starters, it's not easy. I've spent a career looking at science and reading science and writing science and reviewing other people's science, and it's not an easy thing to do. I think that it's taken by some people extrapolation beyond what the data show. I think some people flat out get the data wrong on social media. There's a phrase that I have a pet peeve with, and that's people who do their research. And I don't have an issue with people reading papers. It's not— I don't want to be an academic elitist and say nobody should interpret research unless you've been trained. But what I would say is it's not as easy as just reading the abstract and getting the final conclusion without looking at how the methods— and that's a skill that takes a lot of time to develop and hone. And I'm still learning. Every day is a school day, as I say to my students. I think I drive them crazy with that, but you should be a lifetime learner. The university that I'm at likes to call itself the home of evidence-based medicine, and that's probably true. A guy named Dave Sackett came up with meta-analyses and evidence-based reviews to compile a composite picture of how multiple interventions come to an answer on one outcome. So, let's say it's exercise and muscle mass. And so, there's one study that shows this works, there's another study that shows this works, another study that shows this, another study that shows this doesn't work. And then, so individually viewed, the studies are small pieces of evidence that you go, "Aha," and then you go, "Oh, aha, aha, aha." And then, you have to sort of sum them all up and you're looking for a systematic review and a meta-analysis. And the systematic review implies exactly as it says— you systematically search the literature. It's best done through a library scientist who have full training and a master's degree in library science. It's not just— yeah, it's not something you do. I don't do them. We work with a library scientist when we do them. You review the literature, you you come to a conclusion and it's done mathematically by extrapolating all the data. A lot of people on social media know this and a lot of people interpret them very well, but the vast majority of people aren't really sure they understand, or I know they don't understand what they're looking at when they look at a systematic just by their comments, right? But it's not easy to do, but you're looking for for a systematic review and meta-analysis if you can. And the conclusion of that is much more robust than each individual study. It's the composite of all of the studies in a given area. And that's what you would really like to have when you're saying this works or this doesn't work or this works better than this. And those are— people do those sort of regularly now, but they're not easy to do if they're done well. I'll just leave it at that. So not an elitist. I don't mean to come across that way, but it isn't easy to do this and do the interpretation.

It's difficult. You have commented on someone's post, I think, where they were sharing a narrative study. And you explained, and I'm going to do a poor job. You can clarify after the podcast. I don't know about that.

I think you do a good job.

Narrative was the opinion of the researcher who wrote it. Yes. And here's what I'd like to say. So if I were looking for somebody's opinion, I would come to you. So is there not value in a narrative that maybe is the point of that to save us some time and at least give us a educated hypothesis by people who know before we actually have the research to know for sure.

Yeah. So, you know, we, the group, the royal we locally here, so me, the students, postdocs, and everything, write narrative reviews as well. We try and keep ourselves in check when we write them because it is our opinion and we acknowledge that and it'll just say, a review or a narrative review. I think that the danger— and we've done it ourselves, like we have been wrong, you know, we— I have been wrong several times. And I think the danger is taking a narrative review where somebody has written what they think based on some evidence, and it might not all be human evidence, some of it might be preclinical animal or rat or whatever, or some of it might come from cells and there's a little bit of evidence from humans. And it's like we propose, we hypothesize, we, you know, and everything points in this direction, but that doesn't make it true. And so, we've written narrative reviews and we've tried to shape our thinking in one direction. Then, we've done a study or several studies or we're we do a systematic review and protein in terms of its impact on muscle growth is one. And, it's hard for me to say after doing this for 30+ years is that if you asked Stu when he started 30 years ago, protein was the be-all and end-all. And, it was if you didn't have it, you didn't have enough, there's no way you would get muscle growth. And, a lot of that was shaped by my own experience and lots of different things. And, yeah, I was 30 years younger and I thought I knew everything. Now, I realize I'm 30 years older and I know less probably. Yeah, I think we call that wisdom. And, narrative reviews that I look back that we wrote on that time talked about the importance of protein in determining the response of muscle to resistance training, for example, And, fast forward and now we've done several pretty high-level systematic reviews and we find that the protein effect is a really thin slice. So, good news, bad news, right? Good news is you probably have to worry a whole lot less about protein than we told you in our narrative opinion was the case sometimes as little as 10 but certainly 20 years ago. Now, it seems like people are sort of just discovering protein and I'm like, "We've already moved on." And, my standpat phrase, and this is borrowed from lots of other people have similar analogies is that exercise bakes the cake and protein puts the thin layer of icing on top. And, who likes a cake with no icing? Of course, we like the icing, but if you don't bake the cake, if you don't go to the gym, The protein does nothing. And it's not like protein adds this thick layer of icing. It's a, it's a thin layer. Or some people say protein is the, the sprinkles or the cream or the cherry. You know, there's lots of analogies. But so we've been wrong. And I think that that's the danger of overinterpretation of narrative reviews. And, and hand on heart, like, we, the group, me, have been wrong. And that's a danger in science. Of taking things at narrative face value and saying that's truth. And then everybody goes, well, what is— you know, science never gets it right, it changes its mind. And I'm like, but science is a process, it's never an absolute, but it's the best we have at the time. And I think you have to, you know, put some stock in what that means.

Fair enough. Okay, you— I want to ask you this before I let you go, coming back to protein specifically. And very recently, the, the window opened up. Timing seems less important if you guys have good habits around the clock. And, you know, if you eat before or don't, that's really up to you. If you eat immediately after or don't, that isn't going to make or break the benefit that you got from that session. Tell me if I'm wrong or not. And I want to come back to you with a hypothesis of my own anecdotally. Okay. All right.

I love it. I love it. Okay. So, rewind the clock 20 years. A guy named John Ivy wrote a book called Nutrient Timing. And when I was probably— I was probably 20 years ago, would at least been like maybe just starting my faculty position or it was a little bit before that, there was a lot of work showing that exercise sensitized your muscle to nutrients. The primary one at the time because the whole world was focused on carbohydrate and it was all about getting carbohydrates back to replenish muscle glycogen so you could exercise again. Protein was like I mean, protein wasn't even on the map. And, Dr. Ivy did a bunch of really good work in this area, a lot of it driven by rodent studies but even some human work as well. And, this whole idea was that exercise sensitizes your muscle to nutrients and then you have this window of opportunity to eat carbohydrate, replenish glycogen. And, it sort of was extended then to be you eat protein and that stimulates protein protein synthesis, which is true, and that results in, you know, greater replenishment of glycogen, greater stimulation of muscle protein, and, you know, that's better. Um, you know, so time advances, people do some studies, and one, you know, protein is important, timing is important, actually no, it's not as much. And then, uh, and it exists in a lot of other fields too. Um, it exists in, uh, arthritis research with a lot of pharmaceutical supplements, serotonin reuptake inhibitors and depression. The first studies were like, here's the big effect. Then everything sort of gradually moved back towards, well, it's an effect but it's nowhere near as big as we thought. And, that's exactly what happened with the window. The window seemingly, I say the window closed but actually the window just got bigger and bigger and bigger, right, to your point. And, it's probably, it's open for 24 hours. So, this window of opportunity to replenish your carbohydrate stores or get protein in to get the benefit of the workout that you've done, it's big. Let's just say it's maybe 24 hours long. And, I have a friend named Shawn Arendt who's at the University of South Carolina and he wrote a great narrative review but I think he's spot on. He called it the garage door as opposed to the window. So, with the implication of the size of a garage door as opposed to a window. So, I think you eat before, power to you if you like to do that, but it's not necessary. It's sufficient, it works. You eat post, you like to eat immediately post. And, there's a lot of trainers say, "But I like to start recovery right away." I'm like, might go for it. And, lots of high-end sports teams will have a recovery space and a lot of NCAA teams have a recovery dining hall for athletes. Pragmatically, it makes sense. These people are close to the top of the pyramid and those things might begin to impact their performance the next day. Or, if you work out in the morning and we've got lots of two-a-day athletes going right now and you're working out again or you're playing or something later in the day, for those folks, it probably does make a difference. For the mere mortals out there, myself included, not that big a deal. So, the window's open, get your nutrients in, exercise, still keep doing the thing, but that muscle stays sensitive for a really long time.

Okay, so here's my theory. Okay, I totally respect that, number one, and I think hopefully to every listener it empowers you and helps you feel a little less stress about, you know, the need to get something in if you don't feel like that tolerates it or you just feel better without, you know, in this window that, you know, you're stressed about having to eat it it just relaxed a little bit for me. So, the rules are okay.

Well, there's a lot of young guys in the gym that are walking around with a shaker and you can tell they're pretty strict. And, I hate to pick on the young guys because that was me at one point in time, but it's like we haven't learned something. And, I'm like, I've yet to see, be flat-out honest, like a woman walk with a shaker. So I'm just saying, I'm like, there's a wisdom of crowds going on there somewhere. So I get it. Totally true.

All right. We have a lot of women here who grew up in the '70s and the '80s, and we were very privy to that eat less, exercise more. Yeah. Yeah. So here's just as a coach who's watched for over 4 decades and we take an inventory, when people come in of what's going on. It, you know, they're not maybe an athlete competing, but life is pretty stressful. Life is a workout for them, and that is the workout. And for women who are undereating, often more often than overeating, at least the ones who actively come in and are seeking a coach, that in my experience, the limiter is maybe undereating overall or undereating, that sometimes coupling the purpose of let's consume something around this workout because you're doing two good things, it just mentally or psychologically has a better— it sits better with them because they can see purpose. Now we have them more regularly taking a dose of, you know, higher quality food because they've done this good thing, they're going to make better choices at the meal. How does that sit with you?

Yeah, you know, you're not the first. So first, I get it. I totally get it. And I also get the ethos of, you know, women for a long, long time, as you said, you know, a no, no, no hack on Jane Fonda, like did tons for fitness and women and everything, great role model, but there was no role model in the '70s or '80s for women as a woman who was strong, who lifted weights. The role model for if you were a guy was easy, it was Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was Sylvester Stallone, but no woman wanted to look like that. So, there was no strong women role models. There's a lot more now and I would flat out say is that and love it or hate it, and I know a lot of people will throw buns at me for this one, but CrossFit did a ton for getting women to understand that it was okay to be strong and normalize strength training a little bit for women. And I think if it did nothing else, it got women into gyms and lifting more than any other sport for sure. So, fast forward to today, And the women that you're talking about learned that the way to lose weight and the way to keep yourself slim was to do an aerobics workout, was Richard Simmons, Jane Fonda. And then, what you did was you just ate less and less food because that was the answer, right? Pile on top of that, you didn't sleep well last night, you've got kids, you've got a job, you're trying to balance that against career ambitions and everything, I think it becomes ridiculously difficult to fuel yourself adequately and feel like you're ready to perform the next day. So, you're not the first coach to tell me that this is what they see. And, I think women like the ones that you're training and people who work with women in the age bracket in particular you're talking about find that a common occurrence. And I don't disagree with the strategy of a meal timing issue around the workout being a good sort of, I'll call it a point of learning if you like to say this is what's going to help you here, not the restrict and just drink coffee and don't eat it. That's eventually you're going to crash and you're going to find that actually that makes everything else that you're trying to do worse, particularly your sleep and everything anything else like that. So I don't dismiss it out of hand. I think that the strategy is a solid one. I do think that there's, you know, another— I think there's a research question in there to be tested because I think that the occasion does present itself to say to a woman, look, you've just done this for yourself. Here's the add-on, the bolt-on thing that you're going to do that's going to make what you've just done better and it's an opportunity to fuel yourself appropriately. So, I flat out get it and I don't disagree. I think that it's the timing of that meal probably is scorched earth. I don't think that it has to be pre, it has to be post, but let's just put a bracket around and say if this is exercise, if you feel better getting it here and you can tolerate that, power to you. If you get it here, power to you because it's around the exercise where the window is important, not immediately pre or immediately post. It's big, right? So, but good hypothesis. I'd go with that one.

What's coming?

Are we— Oh, yeah.

Is there more research that we need to do? Always. To menopause, or is it always?

Yeah, we have a big study starting up in perimenopausal women. Uh, we have a current study going in a large cohort of younger women. We just finished a big trial in older men and women using lower rep ranges, um, with different protein supplements. And, uh, we've got a big push coming up. I have 18 members in my lab group right now, almost 3/4 of them are female and they're all interested in women's physiology. And so, it's a big push for us to, in a sense, to try and remediate and make amends for years of having my head stuck somewhere and just thinking that the menstrual cycle was going to mess things up and hormones. And, I now realize that actually it's an intriguing question and it feels Like me, it's the nut to crack, right? It's sort of to convince women that this is something that you need to do. And my wife front and center, I'm saying, "You know what? This is the whatever you want to call it, your golden age, the time to enjoy yourself, time to play with your grandkids." And to do that, cardiovascular fitness is great, but strength and, and tackling these challenges around, around menopause is a big deal. So stay tuned. Yeah, we're— I'm not done yet, even though I'm the chair of the department. So we got lots of stuff going on. But, you know, I say this a lot, I don't want to be disingenuous, but none of it would happen without all the great students and postdocs in the group. They are— they're an amazing group, and they, they They keep me motivated. They're the reason I come to work every day. Amazing.

Well, and McMaster is lucky to have you, but if we see you putting out less research, I'm going to be on top of them.

Fair play. Fair play. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I don't think that'll happen, but, uh, yeah, for sure.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time, sharing your wisdom. Look forward to your posts. We will put everywhere to to connect with you below. Is there one place in particular you'd like to send people?

I've spent more time on Instagram these days than anywhere else. MackinProf, M-A-C-K-N-P-R-O-F. X, or formerly Twitter, drives me crazy. I still use Facebook because I'm old school. I'm on TikTok, but I don't understand that platform at all. It seems mad to me, but there you go.

Well, can you dance or point or no?

Yeah, yeah, that's what I can't do. And my son tells me all the time, you need to do more stuff, Dad. And I'm like, no, like, Dad can't do that. That's a scientist, just talks facts. He goes, that's boring. I'm like, sorry.

There you go. Well, we all found it very interesting. Thank you again for your time.

My pleasure, Debra.

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