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The Flourish Feed Podcast
A series of curiosity driven deep dives into the nature of flourishing through wealth.
The Flourish Feed Podcast
#32 - The Science of Her
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What if the science guiding our health - our training, nutrition, even longevity - was built on incomplete data? In this powerful and eye-opening conversation, I sit down with world-renowned muscle physiologist Dr. Stuart Phillips to unpack a truth that is reshaping modern health science: for decades, research has largely been built around male physiology, leaving critical gaps in how we understand women’s bodies, especially through menopause and aging.
Key Topics:
🏋️♀️Why women were historically excluded from research and how that shaped today’s health narratives
🧬The overlooked importance of muscle as a longevity asset, not just a performance metric
🏋️♀️What really matters for aging well: resistance training, recovery, and protein (in that order)
🧬The misunderstood relationship between exercise, hormones, and the menopausal transition
🏋️♀️Why “under-recovering” may be the real epidemic behind burnout culture
🧬The truth about protein: what works, what’s hype, and what most people get wrong
🏋️♀️How to navigate a world flooded with health misinformation and what scientific literacy really means now
🧬The role of AI in advancing research, reducing busy work, and elevating human potential
Quotes:
• “The system is clearly one that’s derived… it’s a patriarchal system… built around men.”
• “Why are we not studying more women… why can’t we do a better job?”
• “If men had to go through that, we’d have commissioned an international task force and it would have been done by lunch.”
• “Bar none… the foundational behavior would be to be physically active.”
• “Muscle pulls on a tendon, tendon pulls on a bone… bone is a mechanically responsive tissue.”
• “All the good stuff actually happens in recovery.”
• “I could call it overtraining… or I could call it under-recovering—and it’s the same thing.”
• “Exercise is what bakes the cake… protein is the thin layer of icing on top.”
• “It’s really, really difficult… the algorithm rewards bold headlines, not necessarily truth.”
• "Connective tissue remodeling is a future moonshot."
• "Trust how you feel, not just wearable data."
Chapters:
00:00 The Evolution of Science and Women's Health
03:02 Understanding Muscle Health and Aging
05:55 The Impact of Menopause on Women's Health
08:50 The Importance of Resistance Training
11:53 The Role of Community in Fitness
14:56 Investing in Health: The Compound Interest of Fitness
17:57 The Connection Between Muscle and Bone Health
20:57 Recovery: The Key to Effective Training
27:04 The Importance of Sleep and Recovery
32:40 Understanding Protein Needs and Gender Differences
39:51 Training Around the Menstrual Cycle
41:43 Navigating Information in the Digital Age
47:09 The Role of AI in Academic and Research Settings
Learn more about Stuart and his work!
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The Flourish Feed Podcast, a series of curiosity-driven deep dives into the nature of flourishing through wealth. I'm your host, Gillian Stoville Rivers, M A C F P C E A, Senior Wealth Advisor at CIA Zante Wealth Management.
SPEAKER_01No lived experience, of course, but watching my wife go through it, and it was a realization to say to her, you know, well, we know what causes, you know, like a hot flash or hot flush, depending on what side of the Atlantic you're on. But and she said to me, she goes, No, we don't. And I was like, Oh, we we must. And then, you know, of course, inevitably you go and you look it up, and it's like, yeah, we really don't have a great idea on that. And yeah, I thought to myself, if men had to go through that, we'd have commissioned an international task force and you know, we'd uh yeah, it would have been done by lunch because uh there's no way I don't think that most men could have handled that.
SPEAKER_03Science is not static truth, it is a system shaped by who asks the questions. And for most of modern history, those questions were not asked about women. So science isn't wrong, but it's possibly incomplete. And nowadays, people like my guest on today's podcast are the ones asking better questions to update our tooth filters as well as our systems for understanding how health works. This episode is not about fixing women's health, it's about exposing a deeper truth, which is half the population has lived inside a scientific model that was never designed around them. For decades, medical and exercise science defaulted to male physiology, excluded women from trials, especially pre-menopause, and generalized findings across the sexes. And now researchers like Stuart Phillips are helping reveal just how much nuance we've missed, particularly in areas like muscle metabolism, protein requirements, aging trajectories, longevity, and independence. His work shows that muscle health is central to aging well, something I'm very passionate about at a personal level myself, influencing mobility, independence, and long-term health outcomes. Because if flourishing is built on how we invest our time, energy, attention, and our money, then the science guiding those investments has to be right or at least complete. Because when you look at the data, it's easy to see that flourishing has been built on incomplete science. And if we don't correct that, women will continue to underinvest in strength, nutrition, and longevity, and systems such as healthcare, fitness, and wealth planning may continue to misallocate resources. And the gap in time, energy, and attention and money will widen. People like Stuart Phillips from our very own McMaster University Department of Kinesiology are aiming to help us complete the science. But before we get to that, let's get to know Stuart, aka Mackin Prof, a little bit first. Dr. Stuart Phillips is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University and a globally recognized expert in skeletal muscle physiology, protein metabolism, and human performance. His research focuses on how nutrition and exercise, particularly resistance training and dietary protein, interact to support muscle health across the lifespan, with a growing emphasis on aging and longevity. With hundreds of peer-reviewed publications, Stewart has helped shape modern understanding of how muscle mass strength and function influence not just athletic performance, but long-term health, independence, and quality of life. His work challenges both under and over-simplified narratives in fitness and nutrition, bringing clarity to what truly matters: consistent training, adequate protein, and sustainable habits. At the intersection of science and application, Stuart is known for translating complex physiology into practical, evidence-based guidance that helps people move, feel, and age better. Stuart Phillips, welcome to the Flur Speed Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for having me, Jillian. Very generous introduction. I appreciate that. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03Oh, all of it warranted. Now, you know, one of the ideas I've been thinking about is as I mentioned, science is not a static truth. It evolves as we ask better questions. So why were women underrepresented for so long in certain areas of medical and exercise research? And what impact has that had?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I think the system is, you know, it's clearly one that's derived. It's it's a patriarchal system. It was a system that was male-dominated for since its inception. And I think it's probably only, I mean, you can probably point to women innovators in science, and they're sort of dotted along the journey, and we, you know, we should celebrate them, but they are later to the game than men have been. And, you know, as a result, the system's built around, you know, well, men are what matter, men are what count. And I think that's persisted until recently. And uh, you know, uh, my wife as well, who's a female exercise physiologist and amazing woman. Yeah, amazing. Uh, so we have some interesting conversations around the dinner table, and you know, we both probably reached the conclusion about a decade ago why are we not studying more women? And you know, why can't we do a better job? And I think that that's been the sort of slow epiphany that I've had over the last decade or so that's now uh really coming to fruition. So hopefully we can bend the narrative back and uh get back some knowledge that we we didn't have before.
SPEAKER_03That's marvelous. And I mean, there's probably some aspects where extrapolation from male data made sense. Can you think of any areas where it did make sense and where it we don't have to bend the data so much? And maybe that's a good starting point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean I I think you know the fundamental difference then in if you look at uh you know sex steroid biology and obviously women having a menstrual cycle and uh being involved in childbirth and child rearing, then you know, that's a central component of what it means to be female and what it means to be a woman, I think. And you know, that's been the major differentiating factor looking at pathophysiology, where we know that there are distinct differences between how women experience disease trajectories and incidents and lots of other things and you know, leading causes of mortality, broadly speaking, you know, you can shuffle the deck on the top 10, and women are higher and lower than men in a few categories, with a few exceptions. But, you know, for the most part, broadly speaking, it's similar, so it's not maybe unwarranted, but there are some important differences. And I mean, I think that the, you know, when you and I spoke about it when we chatted originally, that one of the most impactful things that is going on right now is a discussion around menopause. And women essentially are saying, you know, this it's time to have a look at this. It's a major transition, and it's hugely disruptive. And I, you know, no lived experience, of course, but watching my wife go through it, uh and it was a realization to say to her, you know, well, we know what causes, you know, like a hot flash or hot flush, depending on what side of the Atlantic you're on. But and she said to me, she goes, No, we don't. And I was like, Oh, we we must. And then, you know, of course, inevitably you go and you look it up, and it's like, yeah, we really don't have a great idea on that. And yeah, I thought to myself, if men had to go through that, we'd have commissioned an international task force and you know, we'd uh, yeah, it would have been done by lunch because uh there's no way I don't think that most men could have handled that.
SPEAKER_03So it's so refreshing to hear someone talk about it openly and even on a podcast that is predominantly about wealth. It's if you'd have thought I would have somebody on my podcast even five years ago to talk about menopause or even use the word menopause, that never would have happened. But it's that kind of socialization of language and lived experience that is so important. And the fact that you and Maureen together have noticed it and acknowledged it and started to really make a focus on it as academics, but also as people who know each other and understand that your lived experience is so markedly different, it's remarkable. So tell me a little bit more about the gaps around that phase, around the menopause phase and and how the gaps in, you know, not just lived experience, but male data historically and now new female data is starting to present opportunities for greater understanding of the physiology of women.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I'll just cycle back to one of the points that you've made around, you know, like you said, you know, five years ago, somebody would say menopause on my my wealth podcast, but but here we are. You know, for years we were, I don't know if we were afraid, but we would certainly exclude women from a lot of our exercise physiology studies because of their menstrual cycle. And we would say, oh, well, you know, but that's been another piece of language that's been normalized, and you know, women talking about their period and how it affects their athletic performance and another, just again, normalization of language that is, you know, if nothing else, that it's progressed the conversation for women and athletes to have with their a lot of times male coaches. And so to acknowledge, yeah, that it's so you know, really great to see a lot of these things opening up and and you know, menopause is no exception. I think it would be fair to say that um it would be Maureen's work in the vascular system that notices far more of a change around the menopausal transition than my physiology, which is you know more related, or my area of study of physiology, which is more related to skeletal muscle. The one exception would obviously be the you know, the muscle pulls on a tendon, tendon pulls on a bone, and we know for sure that you know the uh decline in estrogen around the menopause is uh you know hugely impactful on bone health and bone formation. So, you know, those are two market differences. The muscle physiology is probably closer than we, I think all of us thought going into this. There are some narratives that I think have been largely shaped by animal data, by rodent data, you know, uh, which and again, not to malign the whole field, but the model for menopause in the animal physiology literature was essentially to overectomize rats. And I mean, that's not a model of the menopause, it's a model of you know, radical overectomy, which some women go through. And, you know, I'd appreciate that, but it's it's just a poor recapitulation of, you know, if the onset of most menopausal transitions is around 45 and finishes around age 55, that's a decade of aging. And so there's a lot of changes happening there that are just due from you know, just normal aging in in men as well as women, that I think it's been a little the field's been a little slower to acknowledge. But I do think that we're beginning to sort of pull back uh some of the covers on uh things that are more related to vascular physiology, definitely brain physiology as well, not my area, but um massive change in uh neurochemistry and what happens in women's brains during that transition as well. And not all negative, like everybody's you know, brain fog and everything, but it is a time of sort of reshaping of women's brains. And so you probably need to get somebody better on the need to talk about that. But it it's it's probably also an opportunity for women to you know affect the transition that might affect some of the events like risk for dementia, for example, later in life.
SPEAKER_03I have to say, too, it's it's hard not to have this conversation with you and bring in a little bit of uh like nuances of lived experience on my part. But I would imagine that you would have something to say, as I anecdotally can relate to, about the value and the benefits or the impact of movement and muscle and protein on those chapters. Because you're so far, I can tell you anyway, it is a roller coaster, but there are plateaus where you kind of reach a new normal. And I have to attribute, at least in my case, I have to attribute so much of that to the fact that I lift weights and that I am extremely engaged in, you know, zone two and VO2 max training. And that's a that's always been a big part of my life, but I'm kind of grateful that that is. And I'm I almost want to hear you say, good job, because that's a huge part of it. But tell me a little bit about the science of where does resistance training and cardio training, I know resistance is your jam and your partner's jam is the cardio side of it. But where does that have its role in these chapters or these new plateaus as we go through these phases in menopause?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, look, you're uh, I mean, we could have a big, a big love fest right now because you're speaking my language. I mean, I do think that um, bar none, if you were to put a foundational behavior that women could engage in during that menopausal transition to do as much for themselves as they can, it would be to be physically active and then you know, move on from physical activity to exercise. And I think, you know, obviously zone two, high-intensity interval training, VO2 max type stuff, and that's the aerobic base. Everybody, oh yeah, okay, I know that. And, you know, if I go over to the pulse gym here at McMaster, the weights are down on the ground floor and the aerobics are up on, and this is where most of the women are up here in the aerobic gallery. Now we're seeing more women down here lifting weights, and you know, that's a great thing. But I do think that that's for me anyway, and I know you operate at a very high level in the in the weightlifting sphere. So I'm preaching to the converted here, but I think that that's where it would be great if we could, you know, we could really budge the narrative on women staying strong uh throughout that transition. And and and I think, you know, we've got part of the evidence in the bone literature because as I said, you know, muscle pulls on a 10, 10 pulls on a bone. Bone is like muscle, it's a mechanically responsive tissue. It likes to be loaded, and that's one of the key parts of, you know, foundational parts of building and mitigating declines in bone through the menopausal transition. But I do think, and I'm beginning after, you know, what, 28 years here at McMaster, almost 10 of them spent directing the physical activity center of excellence here, which is a 500-person community strong, you know, basically facility that, you know, people come in, average age about 73, men and women, and they're exercising. And, you know, you just sort of what you know, what's what's your story? You know, what's going on? And they're sort of exercising for all kinds of different reasons, but it's much harder to convince women of that age group, and and probably that kind of quote unquote generation.
SPEAKER_03Generation, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's not, it's not, you know, like it just that's so good for them. And I think the narrative is also, and we still hear it today. We we just finished a really big study in young women, and um, you know, the narrative's beginning to fade, but there still is a lot of, well, you know, I don't want to lift weights and get bulky, get big. And I'm like, you know what? Like, seriously, we've done some training studies in women. And I said, you know what? If you start getting bulky, you let me know, and we'll change the training program. And yet to find a bulky, you know, use the word woman yet. So definitely muscle growth, definitely stronger. And I think for women, like it's a it's a really empowering thing to, I don't know why it's different. I think it is different than aerobic exercise. I just, I think for a lot of women, they surprise themselves, maybe that's the right way to say it, with what they can accomplish after they've done something like this. And, you know, hand on heart, I can say that the the passion project is really to convince women that being stronger in in later life, you know, it doesn't, you know, Jillian, you you're you're up here, right? I get, I know what you're gonna do in a few months. You're gonna, you know, go to uh world championships about these sorts of things.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, but that's because I'm on the I don't I don't want to call it a drug, but it it kind of is. You do become, you do become in love with the feeling that you get from lifting weights. Like once you've done it, it's a cycle, right? It's a circle. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, like I said, we could we could have a big love faster over that because I'm I'm right there with you. But I do think that for uh for women into later life, as you age, cardiovascular fitness is important. It's what keeps you out of the doctor's office so you can get older. You know, you don't go to the cardiologist, you're not getting type 2 diabetes, you're not getting chronic diseases, et cetera, including cancer. Once you get sort of 60 plus, something's gonna limit you, and it won't be cardiovascular fitness, it will be something related to your strength and your power. You'll notice that there's an activity that all of a sudden is really hard to do. It could be going up and down stairs, it could be getting in and out of a car, and all of a sudden, you know, you're just like, what I guess can't do that anymore. And the popular axiom then, of course, is to say, well, getting too old for this shit. And I'm like, that's the kind of you know, talk that we've even got studies that if we kind of eliminate that, you know, I'm too old for kind of narrative, that people begin to do more. They begin to feel better about who they are, and things change. So yeah, I just think it's a duriger part of uh of you know, going through the tr the menopausal transition for sure. Is it the solution? No, it's it's definitely part of a treatment. You know, I think it's a big deal.
SPEAKER_03I always joke that the if there's something that will be on my tombstone, it will be anything worth doing was over worth overdoing because that was Jillian, right? So I'm not suggesting that anybody go, you know, pick up barbells or take up Olympic weightlifting or anything like that. But I think you've pointed to two things. And one of them is for some generations, making the shift, the cognitive shift to go and be part of that population that actually lifts things when that was never part of what they grew up with, that takes a massive amount of trust, right? And and community, which I think you've built. And that community is a huge part of even why I lift is because the people that I do it with, you know, we feel good together and endorphins experienced together are better than endorphins experienced alone. But the other thing that I think is important is you pointed out that at the Pulse, which is a place I used to work when I went to McMass University, but I worked in the aerobic studio, right, when it was all one thing. And that the bro area was over there with the heavy things, and the girly area was with the steps and the tiny little weights that we lifted up and down. So it's nice to hear that even generationally for the young people now, there's more of a women's use of the weight side of the gym. And it's those investments that are gonna give us the opportunity to be able to look at lifting as a lifetime experience, not something we have to do that's later.
SPEAKER_01No, and uh absolutely, and uh, you know, I'll just give a shout out to one of my current PhD students. Her name's Alicia D'Souza. She's um she was a trainer at the Pulse, she's still an athletic trainer, but she started a program called Women on Weights. And it was effectively, you know, the goal was to sort of normalize the activity of lifting for groups of women that were just and you know the the the populate student population of McMaster has changed as well, right? We have a much greater uh ethnic diversity and uh you know backgrounds of people, uh religious, ethnic, racial, et cetera, that again, the normalization process of you know being strong is is not as big a foundation. And I think a lot of it is you know, role modeling. You know, what does it, what, what, what do you need to see, or who do you need to see to say this is an important behavior? And I can see myself being that person. So as my mom points out, who's you know, she's 86 living in Burlington, she's like, well, it was all about Jane Fonda and being basically, she says skinny, but I'll say slim. But you know, that was the physique, right? And you know, Jane looks great, and uh I think she might be getting a little help, but she meant, you know, she looks awesome. And you could believe that it was just about aerobics. Uh, but I think that um most people come to the realization that being stronger later in life is a really big deal.
SPEAKER_03It's an asset. And it and and that's why I I use the word asset and I use the word investment when it comes to health, and it's something that we try to bring up in the conversations, not just because it builds community, but because it actually builds mass. It's going to disappear as you age, no matter how hard you try. So building some up, almost like money in the bank or or assets on the balance sheet early in life, makes a lot of sense to me.
SPEAKER_01It's uh the the analogy I use, and I I don't even understand how it works, but it's it's compound interest, right? You know, the investment earlier makes a whole the dividends are much greater in life. And I, you know, the the narrative arc is actually there for bone. I mean, the story for you know for bone for women is build up your peak bone mass until about age 30, hang on to it until the menopausal transition. And we know that women going into that transition at a higher peak bone mass do better than women who go in at a lower peak transition. And then it's about mitigation of the decline. And you know, so you can do this or we can do that. And you know, people who do this are not lifting weights, they're not dialing in calcium intake, they're not getting vitamin D, they're probably not getting enough protein, and you know, then things begin to fall apart, genetic predisposition, yada yada yada, and that's the transition. If you can't went into it like that, that's the transition. And the story, to be honest with you, is not dissimilar for muscle. As you said, and though I loathe and hate to say it, uh, everything at a certain point is gonna go down. I know that's a depressing thought, but it's about doing, you know, this as opposed to that. And I point out to people is that the curve, you know, differentiation is only a couple of degrees, but they diverge as time goes on.
SPEAKER_03That's the compound part, right? Yeah, that's the compound part. If you can make it so that you're half-lifing at a at a at a higher degree, then that's gonna take you much longer to get to the same place. It might have taken a lot less time. So there's a couple other things. I I do want to go off script a tiny bit and just ask, because you you open my mind to bone. I mean, I definitely think about that. My both my grandmothers, one more pronounced than the other, had osteoporosis, totally different generation, didn't do any of that stuff. But I gotta, I gotta think a little bit more about the bone part because I always think about the muscle part. But the other part that I've recently been opened my eyes to is the fascia part. Is there any work that you do in the fascia part? Because that's a whole other layer that a lot of people don't give a lot of credit to or thought to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, uh in short, no. But I'll, you know, I'll I'll again get the quick anatomy lesson is that you know, muscle is uh is basically it's a protein structure cylinder that's held in place in this sort of scaffold that's around it is actually collagen, you know, without the collagenous sort of this kind of lattice that runs not just around but through sort of the fascia sort of tight around the outside, again comes down and tapers into a tendon that then pulls on the bone. So, you know, to your point around sort of fascial understanding fascia and understanding, you know, the connective tissue connection to the from the muscle to the bone, I think that that's an important part too. It's really, you know, as frontiers go, if I could invent something that um would allow you to remodel connective tissue, I wouldn't be sitting at McMaster, I'd be sitting on a beach in Tahiti, you know, with a Mai Thai and you know, telling you about, you know, fueling up my private jet, because that's the you know, as we age, bone's gonna break down, muscle's gonna break down. I think you retain the ability to remodel muscle until pretty late in life. But connective tissue, man, when it begins to fail and uh begins to get irritated or that, it's tough because it just doesn't heal and regenerate like other things. So, you know, if we could bust that barrier, then you know, off to the races.
SPEAKER_03I like the sound of that. That sounds like a moonshot. That's like a gravity moonshot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_03I want to turn uh the attention a little over to recovery, and maybe there's something you can talk about there as it relates to muscle and exercise. And I think that's a it's a key thing for all people in this day and age because I think we do tend to push ourselves, particularly North American culture is a bit of a hustle culture. And sleep and rest is starting to become a little bit more prominent as a way of of self-care, but also of investment. Do you have any words of wisdom around the recovery aspects of training that you think are really, really important for people to take away and make sure that they think about as intensely as they think about the compound interest of lifting?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, uh like I think the fundamental part when I talk to athletes here at the university, I point out to them that all the training they do and all the practice in the in-gym sessions and everything. I'm like, that's awesome. That's the that's the stimulus. But I'm like, all, and I underscore all the good stuff actually happens in recovery. It's the regenerative phase. And so, you know, the stress of exercise pushes you down into a valley. And then the idea is that actually the recovery process coming out of that valley is not that you get back to where you were, but you get back to a little bit higher than where you were, so that when you push yourself down again, and you can see imagine sort of that over time you're inching upwards and going to the right and getting better. But you know, there's two sort of related concepts, and I'll just flip one on the head on its head to give you the other. There's the notion of over-training, which probably relates to you know, your concept of hustle culture. You know, I'm trying to get this in, I'm doing my exercise, and then, you know, I got a deadline, and it's like, oh, you know, I'm up until, you know, instead of going to bed at you know, 10:30, 11 o'clock, you're up until one, and then you, you know, you shortchange yourself on sleep, and then you wake up, oh, I got to go to the gym, you know, and all of a sudden you now you're you could say, oh, I'm overtraining, and I'm like, I could I could identify with that label, or I could call it under-recovering, and it's the same sort of thing. So the notion of sort of regeneration, of which sleep is a massive component. And if you'd asked me literally uh probably 10 years ago, you know, students, to sleep in it, I'd have been like, nah, it's not that big a deal. Well, first I think that reflects my own poor habits around sleep. I'm I'm not a great sleeper, so I always thought to myself, you know, well, it's not I look look look, I can do this, no problem. I've gotten older, I realized it's it's pretty damn important. And then again, uh my brilliant wife started doing some work in um students actually with with shortened sleep because you know, go figure, students have errors.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and it really, really upsets their their blood vessel function and their vascular function. And we probably have known this for a number of years when we look at comparisons of people who do shift work versus just normal day work. And it's it's it's really, really different in shift workers. So, you know, to your point, I do think that the recovery process and the regenerative, restorative, whatever you want to call it, it's actually crucial. So you if you over-train or under-recover, then instead of you know going down and coming back to, you know, the net neutral would be okay for a while, but this to here, and then this, and then you know, you see where that's going. So that's when exercise becomes counterproductive because exercise is a stress. And you know, I point out to people that your body doesn't know where stress comes from. All it knows is stress, and it's stress of work, it's stress of exams, stress of life, stress of jobs, whatever it is. But it's the stress of exercise, which can be good, but you do need to recover for it to be a benefit of it.
SPEAKER_03Any kind of stress, yeah. Traditional wealth management focuses on a few key moments: your first house, sending your kids to university, when you retire, and when you die. Will you have enough? Will you die with too much or too little? These are questions of a very finite nature. Our approach goes above and beyond, with the belief that wealth is not just money, but comes in at least four forms: time, money, energy, and attention. And that wealth is a wave that you can learn to ride to a life well lived, a life where you flourished, where you surpassed the finite game of having enough, to experiencing the infinite game of playing forever. Instead of just focusing on a few of life's moments, we focus on all of the moments between the 1440 minutes of each day, the energy to be harnessed from each and every sunrise, every meal, and every great night's sleep, the power of connection and meaning that all four forms of wealth, time, energy, money, and attention can access. This is what it means to flourish. So the question is, which wealth advisor is right for you? An advisor who helps you open the door to a few of life's moments or to all of them? Consider this. In the next 24 hours, you have 1440 minutes, and it takes just a few of them to contact me at grivers at asante.com. Doing so could be one of the best investment decisions you ever make. What's your position on wearables? Are you a fan? Do you think that those readings of stress and being underrecovered are helping people, or are they really messing with their heads more than they're helping?
SPEAKER_01I'm I don't have my aura ring on today, but again, to you know, not to come back to my brilliant wife. But my wife is an Olympic caliber sleeper.
SPEAKER_03That must be nice.
SPEAKER_01It is. It it's like uh I I kind of loathe her for it, to be honest with you, because when I do have it on, I'll get a sleep score of, you know, for me, a good sleep score is like 75. And she's like, oh, I got like a 98. And I'm like, how do you get a 98?
SPEAKER_03Like, you know, so do you think it's because she studied it? Like she's she's hacked herself?
SPEAKER_01I no, no, she's just one of like her superpower is the ability to just pull the plug at the end of the day, turn the lights down, read a read a romance novel, and just go to sleep. I I need to bottle some of that somewhere. But you know, the the the truth is, is I think wearables can be useful. I think that it's important to take the data in context. Sometimes the Aura Ring in particular, but uh, you know, if you've got an Apple Watch or a Garmin or a Whoop, whatever it is, can tell you something that you maybe didn't know was going on. Uh, particularly if your resting heart rate is sort of creeping up, we, you know, that's a sign that stress is beginning to accumulate, elevated body temperatures, these sorts of things. But it's it's just a piece of data that you need to take in stride as well. So I stop short of saying to people, plan your life around your wearable data, because I don't think that we're quite there in terms of how useful that data is. So there's still a principle in um in exercise physiology and around auto-regulation. So how do you feel? You know, uh, was is today a good day? And you know, it might say, you know, today's the day where we're gonna smash it in the gym. And you had three and a half hours sleep, you you know, tossed and turned. And so today's not a day you're gonna smash it in the gym. But maybe it's like today is like sort of a slow day, but you feel great, you you know, whatever it is, and you it's time to crush it. You're it's time to go. So I I think that you know, you trust how you feel is a is is a good sort of feedback system, but but also don't ignore maybe some of the warning signs, which wearables can pick up for you. But uh I I my friends and uh all kinds of things love to when we we we hike together, they love to see how far they walk, they love to see how many floors they climb, they love to see how many steps they've taken. And you know, I I get that. But don't it's not it's it's not something to live and die on. So I like wearables, but yeah, take them in stride is my message.
SPEAKER_03I liken it to it's another, it's a toy right now. I I think it it's giving you novel information.
SPEAKER_01You use the exact same word that I use. I call it a toy as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's but it's a toy that if we use it for enough decades, we'll get bored with the novelty of how many flights we climbed, and we'll start actually connecting the dots just because our brains are good pattern recognition boxes, right? So we'll start connecting the dots on, well, I did that and it caused this, therefore. And then we become good at making our own patterns around it. I think it's just gonna take us time because, like to your point earlier, there's been a release of certain exercise data and recovery data over the last 20 years, even. Even before that, I don't think we really talked about recovery that much. I don't remember as a young athlete that we talked about it.
SPEAKER_01No, probably not. No, yeah.
SPEAKER_03But you put that into the ether for long enough and you give the human brain the opportunity to connect the dots, it's gonna get better at knowing what to do with the data that's on your stress level or on your on your sleeper scores. Okay, I want to talk before we finish up for today, I want to talk a little bit about protein because I keep saying I'm gonna do it and I haven't done it yet. Differences in the way we respond to protein. Are there market differences between men and women? I know probably in terms of amounts, but it is it even in types or timing or periodization or anything like that when it comes to how we eat protein.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so uh, you know, muscle physiology for 30 plus years, you can't not look at protein as well. So we've done a lot of work in this area. We have done a fair amount of work in women as well, older women, younger women, admittedly, not women who are going through menopause, but we do have a study on the go right now in perimenopausal women who are uh resistance training, higher versus lower protein. I think it would be fair to say that, and this is part of the recovery, sort of, I call it the the triumvirate of nutrients, is rehydration, refuel, repair. It's a really easy one. You know, rehydration is easy, that's fluid, you know, and if you don't rehydrate yourself, you're gonna feel that quicker than anything else. The refuel part, that's carbohydrate for the most part. Put it back and get it into your muscle, ready to train the next day. And the repair part or regenerate or remodel, call it whatever you want, that's protein. And it's the last one to show up in terms of priority importance, but it will show up over time if you underdo protein. And I think it would be again uh, you know, not to sort of overgeneralize, is to say that in the athletes that we studied and in basically just general female populations, they come closer to under consuming on a regular basis than do men. And I think that's just, you know, sort of a cultural phenomenon is that women tend to gravitate toward like away from protein-containing foods. I don't know that it's you know, it would be right to say that women are habitually on that level, but but they're close. There's a lot more of them, particularly as they get older to the lower end of things. So, you know, to put some some numbers on it, everybody sort of wants a number. The recommended dietary allowance is 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. That's around 0.35 grams per pound. And everybody, you know, is it is it my ideal body weight? Is it this body weight? And I'm like, we're just gonna gloss over that because I don't think it matters, and just say use your body weight. And then, you know, for a long time, myself and several other researchers have said, we think that that's sort of the floor, that's the bare minimum, and the requirements should be higher, at least 1.2, so coming up to around 0.5 grams per pound. And you know, from there, I think you can probably optimize things going up to about 0.7 grams per pound or 1.6 grams per kilo. I think after that, you know, uh, and we're in a day and age where you know we've got protein, water, protein, hot parts, protein, oxygen, yeah, protein, everything. Yeah. Like I actually somebody sent me uh an advertisement for a shishka bar that put, you know, like protein things in a shishka pipe.
SPEAKER_03Really? Oh, I was just joking about the breathing part, but yeah, wow.
SPEAKER_01Well, yeah, you know, and that's that's what maybe reminded me of it. And I'm like, how does anybody think that that's the right thing? Anyway, so I I digress, you know, yeah, chalk one up for I don't know what, but yeah, craziness.
SPEAKER_03Consumerism.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So there's this health halo around protein right now, but the foundational piece, and again to come back to exercise, is that exercise and particularly resistance exercise is actually like it bakes the cake. It's what makes protein work. In other words, just eating protein and consuming more protein, for most people, like a decade from now, after this protein craze has kind of run its course, we're gonna discover, I bet you, that it does not very much at all. The exercise, my analogy, bakes the cake. Then you know, the thin layer of icing on top, that's the protein. And, you know, who doesn't like icing on cake? I get it and everything, but just realize that it's the exercise part that's the bigger ordeal. Bringing it back then to the question that you asked me about differences between men and women, I think that if there are differences, they're pretty small. Small enough to the point that I think if we normalize those recommendations per kilogram or per pound of body weight, we get most of the answers. I don't think that there is this market difference between men and women that would make me change my recommendations. And that's similar to the prescriptive advice I give around how you program exercise. Like I don't think, you know, if you came in and and you know, your male counterpart came in, it's not like I'd be there's a woman-specific training program for you, and there's a man-specific one here. It's sort of what can you do? And then I'll program according to that rather than I know that you're a man, I know you're a woman. And I think that that would be true for protein as well.
SPEAKER_03Is there any oscillation in that recommendation? I remember reading a really famous CrossFit athlete, Annie Thor's daughter. She started to become pretty participatory. What is the right word? She became a spokesperson for women in nutrition and cycles and so forth and high performance. And she would say at certain times of the month, you actually need to eat more carbohydrates because there's certain hormones that are blocking your carbohydrate absorption. And that made me think, well, if I'm going to eat more carbohydrates, am I supposed to oscillate down on protein at those points? Is there any kind of shift when it comes to a woman's nutrition as opposed to a man's nutrition because we're not as daily linear, we're actually a little bit more periodic.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. It's, I mean, I'm I'm never gonna argue with somebody uh like a Thor's daughter or any any Dothir um CrossFit athlete. I I've seen those women in action and uh they are, yeah, so you know, lived experience I won't disagree with. On average, we don't see this sort of periodic change in need for nutrients. And we're just about to publish, in fact, the paper was accepted just a few days ago where we're going to show that training your and and and periodizing your resistance training according to your menstrual cycle actually has no net effect on how you gain muscle or strength. And I know that that's been a narrative that's been told out there, and a lot of so these cycle-synced workouts are a pretty big deal. I think that the fair message to say is, and again, this is this is Alicia's work, is that um women should train around their menstrual cycle about how they feel. And you know, and some women are it's just not a thing. Like it's like, you know, I could care less whether I have my period or whether I'm ovulating or luluteal phase. Other women are, you know, that they're smashed at certain times in their cycle. So, you know, I don't want to blithely say um, you know, this is how you should train, but I think again, it's this auto-regulatory type of pattern and not, you know, thou shalt eat this way during this and this. You know, so if it worked for your Annie Thor's daughter uh example, uh I'm not gonna disagree with that, but it probably worked for her because you know, those types of athletes are so in tune with their bodies and how it feels and everything. That's essentially auto-regulation. And I don't know that there's any hard physiology behind we need to make menstrual cycle phase-based recommendations, but definitely listen to your body is would be smart advice for sure.
SPEAKER_03Those are really good points and inputs because you know what you're testing for is is there a performance difference? And what I think probably a lot of the popular programming is around, is yeah, you know what? Certain times of the month, the muscle just doesn't feel as good, you know, like you're you maybe are awake up a little achier or something like that. That doesn't mean you can't push through. It means you maybe don't want to push through and maybe there's a value to not pushing through. So this brings me to this maybe second-last question or so. But as science evolves, because you're sitting from a very academic perspective, but you also have a pretty good ear for popular culture, how should people think about trusting what they hear? Because there are so many people out there, voices out there, the algorithm is in their face. If I were to look at the the feed of my sons versus the feed that I get versus the feed that my dad gets, you would think we're on three different planets because of the incredible terabytes of information that are being funneled at people based on some preferences. So how do we know which narratives to take, you know, seriously and and which ones to to ignore?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I wish I could give you a great answer. Uh the the short answer is it it's really, really difficult. I mean, I do spend a fair bit of time by comparison to my academic colleagues in kinesiology on social media. And the and the main reason I do it's because um, you know, 28 years ago when I first started here, I taught a first-year class in nutrition and metabolism, and we used to conduct this is you know to show you how how old that whole notion is, uh an assignment where students would cut an article out of a newspaper, you know, with a pair of scissors, right? And that was when students used to pick up a newspaper and and then they would find the scientific journal article to which the newspaper would refer, and they would have to, and it was literally like you glued the newspaper on a piece of paper, you handed in the journal article. And the the whole point of the assignment was actually to get the students to learn where the library was so they could find the journals, right? It wasn't anything other than that, right? And but it was a little bit of scientific literacy, and then you know, the course evolves over the years, and all of a sudden nobody's really reading the newspaper, just looking at the internet, and so they would print articles off the internet. I'm like, yeah, that's fine, and everything. The course evolves even more, and people are like, hey, I heard this person on it started out with a gain to show my age, started out on MySpace, then it was Facebook, then it was Twitter before it was X. And I'm like, Well, you know, we can't have a video. Assignment, but this is where they're getting, you could see the evolution of where they're getting their information. I don't teach that class anymore, but I do go to a first-year class that is sort of you know an introduction to kinesiology, and I kind of do a show of hands, and I'm like, who picked up a newspaper and there's no hands? Who you know read something on the internet, one or two hands? And the vast majority will say they get their information from TikTok, Instagram, and that sort of thing, and which makes me sort of you know scratch my head. And I'm like, are you following like the Global Mail, the New York Times? And they're like, no, no, no, just you know, this guy, this woman, this, you know, so to your point, it's really tough, right? Because the the algorithm rewards bold headlines, it rewards engagement, and so you get these things like you know, 10,000 or 20,000 likes and then 50 comments. I mean, that's a hallmark that it that the person has paid for a service at some point in in their in influencer career to like their posts through automation, and then but the engagement is is not particularly high. And that then, you know, the message gets higher up in the algorithm, you see it higher in your feed, and you know, it's dependent on what you click on. It becomes very, very difficult to decipher what is real and what is just noise. And um, you know, I wish I could give you a great answer, but the standard ones are follow people with credentials, but I think that's beginning to break down these days. Like we get some doctrines.
SPEAKER_03Even they're writing some pretty bad hooks.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's the other one, too. You know, they're not exactly upholding to me anyway, their Hippocratic oaths. But, you know, it and so you can probably find a point of view and a way of looking at the world that is, you know, in alignment with most of your cognitive biases and everything else. So I think this is where it comes back to grounding a lot of uh younger people in their own framework for scientific literacy. And so more and more we've talked here at the university around trying to get people to understand what is good and what is bad information. And you know, hopefully we're being we're doing a decent job in that. But uh, you know, these are these are now ubiquitous devices. Yeah, I don't know about you, but it actually drives me crazy that at the gym people sit and scroll on them in between, you know, doing one set, and I'm like, just just take a breather and then get right back at it, would you?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's a whole other drug, right? I mean, and that is the truth. It is giving you a dopamine hit just by looking, and people don't even know that. I think those are all really great points, and that the literacy point, and also something we really work hard with my clients, but also with the podcast, is helping people see those biases so that they can call them out on themselves because that level of awareness is power. If you know you're being manipulated, then you're maybe less likely to be so. Now, one of the things we didn't get to talk too much about today, but I'm asking every guest on the podcast, has to do with AI. And I'm I'm sure you've, you know, you probably work with it maybe at a distance, but the question I'm asking is looking ahead or even looking right now in your day-to-day, what's the most meaningful way you're using or imagine using AI, either to create more time or clarity or to have more impact on the people and with the people you serve?
SPEAKER_01So it's a massive issue at the university. You can imagine that. Every a lot of parents are saying to me, Well, I hope you you ban its use. And I'm like, no, we don't do that, because on the other side of campus, uh, have a colleague who discovered uh an antibiotic for multiple resistance strain bacteria using AI screens. And that's huge. And I'm like, how can we at one stroke say, you know, uh Professor Jerry Wright has got this amazing discovery, and then say, but don't use AI? Like it's it's it's hypocritical, right? So it's there, uh, it's not going away, it's only going to become more. So we try and you know, basically coach students as to how to use it. Personally, like without it, uh I'm feeling about 120, 130 emails a day. I would find it difficult to reply to as many as I do without co-pilot. I'll be honest about that. I it's not like I take exactly what it's I tweak it a little bit.
SPEAKER_03You're working, it's a writing partner, if you will.
SPEAKER_01It does, it does, a writing partner. I like that. It also helps check some of the things that we do, like a quick scan on you know, summary reports. I'm like, you know, I recently did a review uh for another department and I got a document that was 300 pages long, and I'm like, I love it. Like, I'm sure you've worked really hard on this, but there's no way I'm gonna read 300 pages. So I'm like, chat, give me a summary, give me, give me the highlights, you know. So it's really about trying to simplify some of the things, reduce the volume of of uh some of the documents that we handle. But I do think going forward it'll become a much bigger part of creating what we call standard operating procedures. We we're using it right now in processing of images that we have on muscles and pieces of tissue, for example. Uh it's just reducing the the labor work that we was previously, and I hate to say this, I would get grad students to do. I mean, they're still, they're still they're awesome. Love the grad students, but they are, you know, relatively sort of cheap labor uh as much as I love them. Um but the you know the truth is that they've got much better things to do, and if we can get AI to help them, that's that's I think where it will be a major impact in the field that we have.
SPEAKER_03That's one of the coolest answers I've heard because first I hear that you're actually putting cool stuff into LLMs, which is useful valid information as opposed to you know garbage influencer and sorry, not shouldn't say that it's all info, but you know what I mean. I guess but also you're raising the level of what the grad student gets to do because now the base layer of of kind of maybe maybe more gritty work is actually being handled by the AI. And that that sounds like a great win for the grad student.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean they're they're you know uh again hand on heart. Like I mean, probably like a lot of folks that you meet in in the business world, I mean, I I'm a product of uh of their hard work, right? I I look good in their reflected hard work, they do, they do the the grind, right? And um they're too valuable in terms of thinkers and creators to to waste on spending hours and hours in in the lab and you know, sort of circling little things when you can teach AI to do it and it can generate an answer in an hour.
SPEAKER_03And as long as they have they have the appreciation of where that work came from, you're winning because there's they're getting both.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So we get them to do the circling first, and then we say, oh, there's an AI model.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Aren't you grateful? You know what? Thank you so much for today. I think we identified at least two moonshots. One is the understanding of how to remodel fascia, which is gonna, you know, obviously put the hand, the Maai Tai in the hand on the beat. And the second is bottling Marine McDonald's capacity for sleep. So we're gonna figure that one out too.
SPEAKER_01Uh she is my hero. Uh, she doesn't wear a cape, she just gets so much done in a day. I don't know how she does it. But that sleep thing is is, I'm convinced it's it's sort of like the core. Um, and to be honest with you, going through menopause, you'd probably hate for me to share this, but was a little bit of kryptonite because it just disrupted her sleep.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that's the key.
SPEAKER_01And it really then messed with that, you know, that yeah, that thing that she can do.
SPEAKER_03All of her superpowers, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Awesome.
SPEAKER_03Stuart Phillips, thank you so much for sharing with us today your huge, incredible, impactful role in women's health and within the academic community and beyond. I hope you have the most amazing day, and I look forward to working with you again. Take care.
SPEAKER_01My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Bring me back in a couple of years, I'll tell you how it all works out.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. We'll do. Join me next week on the Flourished Feed Podcast to keep exploring the infinite game. In the meantime, remember to stay curious, turn your passions into purpose, and play hard. I'm rooting for you. This program was prepared by Gillian Stovel Rivers, who was a senior wealth advisor with CI Asante Wealth Management. This is not an official program of CI Asante Wealth Management, and the statements and opinions expressed during this podcast do not necessarily reflect those of CI Asante Wealth Management. This show is intended for general information only and may not apply to all listeners or investors. Please obtain professional financial advice or contact Gillian to discuss your particular circumstances prior to acting on the information presented.