Women are Not Small Men: a paradigm shift in the science of nutrition | Stacy Sims | TEDxTauranga

Not having your period is so normalized in sports, it's scary

I've worked as an EMT and it's disturbing how little research there is on women's specific medical complications too, for example, the differing symptoms during cardiac events.

"Women are not small men" women are women, we have cycles, early in our cycle we can work hard, later in our cycle we need to rest more. We need to work with our bodies not against them!

I was born in the early 1950s, got my 1st period at age 12 the summer after 6th grade. My father, a physician, had given me a book on the facts of life, a gift from my grandfather (a physician) for my 11th birthday. The title "The Facts of Life". I truly appreciated this gift although the book read more like a medical textbook than anything applicable to getting my 1st period. It showed the biomedical mechanics of the male and female reproductive systems, mentioning the menstrual cycle and how a baby forms. Zero guidance on how it feels to get your period or how to reckon with it. My mother never prepared me for what to expect or do until I actually told her I'd gotten mine and asked what to do. She offered me a sanitary belt and pads with little explanation. It felt like something shrouded in shame. Since my mother used pads, it was all she knew. And she had nothing further to add, no pep talk or silver lining. Later, I was at my friend Kerry's house when I got my next period. I felt so embarrassed to ask her if she had a spare pad. She said no, she used tampons and asked if I wanted to try it. I didn't have any details at all about tampons except magazine ads showing a nondescript box. Then Kerry got her mom who explained everything in detail in the most open, kind manner without a hint of embarrassment. She answered my many questions. She even told me that light physical activity like walking helped calm cramps and strong emotions. Her explanations were golden and so helpful. I was so grateful because it dispelled a lot of my concerns about what is normal. When I left Kerry's house, I was wearing a tampon and had extras to figure out if they were for me. I told my mom about the whole experience when I got home. All the questions and concerns I'd had and the answers given. I wanted her to know how this advice helped me. I knew more about tampons than she did. When I realized this, it gave me compassion for her, a 37-year old school teacher who didn't know much about such things even after 17 years of marriage and giving birth. This is when I began to truly understand how repressed many of the so-called Silent Generation were (my parents born after WW1 during the Depression). They were too afraid to even ask questions. I can only imagine why that silence existed.

Women are NOT small men. So simple. So brilliant. So true.

This is a much broader problem in science. Most studies are conducted with men only to avoid irregularities, even though often those irregularities could be important for what is being studied.

Women are not "difficult to study"...we make up half of the population and this is just the way we are. Thank you Dr. Sims for your work and for being a force of change!

Women and men are not the same. Crazy this has to be said on any intellect level... Great speech!

A week before my period my body gets really hot. So when I'm working out. I find myself over heating much faster. So I have to slow down and my husband is like catch up. And I'm like I can't😥.

This was perfectly said. Women are women. My wife has been through the same thing that I think most wives have been through. Their husband can lose weight easier and it discourages her. We need more information like this so she can do what her body is supposed to do.

“we don’t study women” truer words cannot be spoken by health scientists. Ready for change. Thanks for your research 🙏🏻

Women and men are biologically different. I think all sane people can agree on this.

Even in feminine sports like ballet losing your period is a sign of good sportmanship so we can all agree that it's not just the obese white males giving us a hard time, there's a cycle of toxic femininity and ignoring our body's basic functions to be addressed as well

Expanding on your message, I'd like medications to be tested on woman as well as men. I am not a small man, I am a small woman.

“Taking her own physiology and working with it” ... words to train by 😻

This was soooo interesting. As a man I never even thought about the impact of periods on woman regarding sports (I never had one lol).

If only this was concerning just sport and nutrition... almost all medical and psychological studies are done with the subjects being only men or men and women who are on hormonal contraceptives. Meaning the results are applicable to men and women who take hormonal contraceptives. Why? Scientists want to avoid fluctuation to get clean results. The only problem is, that there IS fluctuation within the menstrual cycle and we HAVE to take it into consideration if we want to treat or analyse women.

My Husband and I have been training for years... after about 15 years of trying different things, I found I need to eat, and eat well, carbs as well... Weight training and cardio evenly help me. Just after ovulation I get extra hungry for carbs, and I found that by adding some rice to my protein and veges helps me through a good workout. I find my best time for exercise is the week of my period. The worst is after ovulation and is kind of continues until I get my period. My husband never seems to fluctuate, and I get that. I understand my needs, and I use it to my advantage when I can.

This is the reason why I want to study women’s health. People always say what is there to study about women. I say EVERYTHING if you look at almost all general case studies and scientific research regarding the human mind and body a mass majority of the research is going to have been originally based on men or entirely based on men and equally applied to women with little to no adjustment. I don’t understand how scientists and physicians can deny the fact that the biological differences mean something and thus affect us different. Down to our genetic makeup we are different and we should have the same studies done to make up for those differences. Not to mention the studies that pertain only to women that still haven’t been done. We have so many questions that people either ignore, give simple solutions and brush off, or often we are given the answers based off a mans study and wonder why our result is not what was expected.

I remember an anatomy class in med school 8 years ago: the high expert (male) teacher was explaining the trajectory of some muscle and suddenly said "there's an anomaly to this because in women this muscle..." So apparently all women having a variation from male anatomy was an "anomaly"... 🤦