Lift Heavy, Protect Your Brain: Strength, Creatine, and Sauna for Women with Dr. Stacy Sims

**Mary Claire Haver** (0:02)
In part one of my conversation with Dr. Stacy Sims, exercise physiologist, nutrition scientist, and author of Next Level and ROAR, we challenged some of the biggest assumptions women have been taught about exercise and nutrition. We talked about why fasted workouts, endless cardio, and eating less often work against us. Not because we're doing something wrong, but because so much of the advice that we've inherited is never designed for female physiology. Today, we're taking that conversation one step further. If we know what doesn't work, what should we be doing instead? We dive into the kind of exercise that actually protects our brains and bodies as we age, including our muscles, our bones, and our metabolism. We talk about why strength, not endless endurance, is one of the most powerful tools women have, and exactly how just 20 minutes in the gym can make a meaningful difference. We also tackle wellness trends dominating social media and separate what the evidence actually says from what marketing wants us to believe. We cover creatine, sauna, cold plunges, GLP-1 medications, and peptides. If you've wondered where to focus your limited time and energy, this episode will give you a plan grounded in science and designed for women's bodies.
I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist and certified menopause practitioner. I'm also an adjunct professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Welcome to unPAUSED, the podcast where we cut through the silence and talk about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life.
The views and opinions expressed on unPAUSED are those of the talent and guests alone and are provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. No part of this podcast or any related materials are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
How do you feel about GLP-1s?

**Stacy Sims** (2:28)
Oh, interesting. It's a time and a place thing again. I love them for what they're doing for the OBC Deputy. Same. Not necessarily excited with the uninformed practitioner who is not pushing lifestyle. So we see that loss of lean mass. Because I can always, I think I told you this before, the Wall-E movie where they're floating around, right? And he falls off, and he can't stand up. I'm like, that's where we're going. What I don't like, and I did the Instagram rant on this after the Grammys.
And for me, it's not like, okay, maybe you have health reasons for using it. But for me, as the mother of a teenage daughter who's very impressionable, and for so long we have been really pushing strong, be strong, eat food, skinny is not good. Now all of a sudden you see all these Hollywood people who are backlashing and now super skinny is in. And the mental health damage that is doing to all the young people out there is astronomical. Because there's now putting women back in that box to be very small and demure and not take up space. And that's what frustrates me.
Because there's no real reason to be microdosing or to get super skinny. We don't know what the long-term outcomes are if you don't need it for health.

**Mary Claire Haver** (3:42)
For normal weight. For healthy people.

**Stacy Sims** (3:44)
Right. And so it's more like the wild, wild west. And I feel like you can get GLP-1s anywhere.

**Mary Claire Haver** (3:50)
Anywhere. Well, on that topic, GLP-1 is an FDA-approved peptide. But what do you feel about the whole peptide movement right now?

**Stacy Sims** (3:58)
We're talking like BP?

**Mary Claire Haver** (4:00)
I'm talking about the gray market.

**Stacy Sims** (4:01)
Oh, yeah.

**Mary Claire Haver** (4:01)
Not, not some morelin and not things that are FDA-approved. I mean, for our listeners, insulin is a peptide. Like peptides are just chains of amino acids that bind to receptors and do things in the body. And but I'm talking about the gray market, you know. And some of them are going to be fast-tracked, I think, under this administration, good or bad. But how do you feel?
Is this helping? Is this hurting? Do you have an opinion? Are they in New Zealand?

**Stacy Sims** (4:25)
They are in New Zealand. They're not legal, though. You have to, like, I'm going to say it anyway.

**Mary Claire Haver** (4:30)
Black market.

**Stacy Sims** (4:30)
Just circumnavigate to order from Australia and say it's for research only. You cannot get someone to compound it for you in New Zealand. And they're very tight on that because they're like, well, there's no real demonstrative evidence to show that they work and it's banned by WADA. So we're not letting you have it. Some of our professional athletes came back in with it and they got arrested and put on probation because they're bringing illegal substance in. So it's not legal in New Zealand. But very aware of it because I have a lot of injured professional athletes. They're like, maybe I should get on these. These are going to help. Even when I tore my meniscus and hamstring, I was considering it. I was like, oh, maybe I'll give it a go. So I have tried them and didn't see much. What worries me is now that we are in this mass longevity market and everyone's clamoring to be in there, that they're overselling results and there's not science to back it up. We see stuff in rodent studies that may or may not be promising. We don't know yet. We don't have any real human trials. If you want to experiment on yourself, maybe, but probably not because we don't have enough evidence.