In this episode, Dr. Andy Galpin reveals his latest research on hormone-based birth control and its effects on the sex hormones ...

top-exercise-scientist-shares-his-life-hack-for-optimal-performance

Top Exercise Scientist Shares his Life Hack for Optimal Performance

with tell me something that you're really excited about that you're working on in your lab right now oh well we have a couple of projects going on right now um one of them is we're very interested in we we I've been fortunate to deal with work with a lot of professional female athletes the research there as you know is challenging nah and things like that are better about including women in studies now but they don't have very many questions that are specific female questions right so we're not asking questions that are not relevant to men yeah it's always oh they're relevant to men but also it's not irrelevant to him will throw them in got it right but that's different than going after a few most specific question we're actually running a study right now my my graduate student Julian is doing an interesting project looking at whether or not hormone based birth control in female athletes and what is the association there if any between that and sex hormones as well as the microbiome because there's a little bit of a algorithm happening there where we know that U exercise influences both those other factors we know both those other factors influence the other ones and it's like a little bit of a thing there so that is interesting to sort of untangle like that's really fast yeah I don't you know we know that there's a subset of people who take World contraceptives I mean we know their shbg or their sex hormone globulin will go up but they actually become symptomatic because their testosterone goes down course and then they get low libido um not everyone not everyone but certainly happens to you know subset of people and so uh that is sort of an interesting well there's initial evidence at this point that the gut Market biome is plays a fairly critical role critical role in sex hormones for women and so our question is we also have indications that the gut microbiome may be altered by birth control we also know temporarily know is a strong word that exercise ultris the microbiome as well we just had a paper published on this and so it's like wait a minute what if you're taking hormone that are changing it you're exercising that's changing it and that's all changing your hormone concentration like what's the magic recipe here yeah I don't know yeah I I don't know if it like is nothing maybe being so physically fit outweighs everything nothing matters maybe it doesn't matter I I don't know what the answer is going to be there and it's going to be very complicated and I can tell you right now regardless our study is not going to answer the question because you need but it's an initial study and it's an important question and I think I I applaud you for doing it because there's not enough data on women in general like if you look at studies I I I talked about this before but like if you look at like in my field right you type in penis in uh Google Scholar or Pub Med you get 50,000 results oh yeah when you put in clitoris get 2,000 it gets up you get up but it's it's a lot less right and so just in general women have been understudied and I think that's really really valuable yeah easier structures to study probably if you're a female athlete in the calci Fon area let us know because it's um poor Julian man it is a very challenging study to pull off because we got to take blood multiple times during specific phases of the menstrual cycle um because by the way that alters of course and we have to take stool multiple times throughout the menstrual cycle because there's actually data that suggest some suggest it doesn't I don't actually know what the answer is going to be but that the microbiome itself will change to during different phases of the metal cycle it will I I think it does if it does if you're a research participant we love you and you are so valuable to the world yeah man and uh please consider it really uh okay I have some like very quick rapid questions that we usually end with what's something that you know now that you wish you knew earlier I was really bad when I was in school of just keeping things so there's all these notes and I was the type where I'm like as soon as the class is over I threw everything away yeah like literally right I'm like a damn like what kind of cool to save all that stuff I spent 10 years like accumulating um and that's the same thing for athlete like I just was not good at keeping athlete data and stuff for a long time so I wish I would have been better about some of those things so I don't know if that's like a very fun answer but that came to mind is no I think it's helpful I mean I wrote these beautiful Anatomy notes when I was in medical school and I still refer back to them I I didn't all my notes but I kept those I spent a lot of time on them and I was like you know what I will want to look back at these you know it's wild so for my PhD again I'm not a real doctor this doctor it's okay we got to take uh one of our physiology class we got to take in med school MH so during my semester I was the only student in that class was not a med med student which is really cool and we got to do the med style of school right which is you know like like entire courses in8 weeks yeah four hours a day sort of thing it was just a wild that's the only class I kept my notes from still this day that's the only ones I have which is really fun I don't ever use it at all but I'm always like that it was cool what's a non-negotiable for you something you got to do every day my overall philosophy to life is the opposite of that which is you can play a game of sensitivity and you play game of resilience and there's some things you want to be really sensitive to and there's things you want to be really really resilient too I spend more of my time pushing towards resilience which is like I don't want to be in a position where I have to do anything I don't want to have to have to do breath work I don't want to have to exercise I don't want to have to eat a certain way or a certain time or anything like that to have a phenomenal day um that's probably because I come from the country and I like to spend a lot of times Outdoors where it's like you're not going to have like some like you just deal with it and so um I actually work really hard to make sure like if anything is like like oh man that that's great every day okay great make sure you can still perform without those things so that is a that is a non-negotiable my non-negotiable is I i' never want to be in a position where I have to have my special mattress to sleep I don't want to have to have my special routine to have like a focused conversation um I need to be able I believe like I should be able to perform under any circumstances at my best not just like get through it but you should be resilient against all those things so I have like my anti- routine routine which is not to say to be super clear I I don't just like make up wake up and do like random all day like that's not at all how I operate um I think adaptable I want people to understand like what are the set and circumstances you have to do to have your best performance that's great and replicate that most of the time but don't become precious right don't become so precious we like oh my gosh I haven't done blah blah blah blah blah and now like excuses excuses like no like you need to be able to be resilient and to be able to crush no matter what the situation is for any number of reasons like throw kids in the mix you learn that lesson like real fast right oh yeah so yeah that that's my non-negotiable what's one thing you wish that you could do or thing that would be done that could change the world I spend most of my time on what I'll collectively call the future of human performance rather than the current I think the biggest hole we have is almost everything that is understood about human health and performance is disease prevention we don't have anything on the other side of the equation we have not sick yet and now there's a lot of people moving towards like the middle ground but the physiology of High human performance is zero we know highest vo to Max ever we know some of these thingss reference ranges for blood work people have no idea what should your blood glucose be well we know what diabetes is and we know what but like what should it be if you're a robot where should it be right that's R the best example let's take homosysteine let's take a let's take uh like where should they be like a medical doctor is going to answer these questions way differental note yeah and we we publish data on this um and we have more stuff coming soon but those things um they're almost such that like it's almost zero it's almost like throw the whole thing away and start again what we really need and all this by the way is based on like we we've had thousands of athletes on our stuff so we have a really good idea there but I need 5 million so when you ask like what's the world problem that's what I want I want want to know I want to 25 million right I want to know 50 million people in there and I want to know what were the top five percentile of performers not athletes performers Focus energy attention love affection like all those things right put that's performance that's still performance T right whatever you however you want to look F perform that's up and then I want to know like what is common between those yes we know that there's different ways to get to different places that's great but that can be figured out and so I want to know I want to give people not just like congratulations not dead yet we want to give like great you are awesome and what I'm really kind of getting at is is like my entire career at this point is going from good to great so how do you get to Great and I want great yeah I want to know what great is in all those areas what should you care about what is great and how do we get you there and with evidence right not just speculation which is what a lot of we have right now speculation well I mean like our stuff is speculation at this point right well again we have thousands of athletes in our database and I've got over 15 years of doing this stuff like we're pretty good feel we're be you have science behind us I want I want science though and I want the world to know all this numbers I don't want those to be like yo Andy what's your reference range and be like no you can't have that right yeah I want to put this out and be like no no can have here the whole world yeah that's the goal that's awesome and then lastly what's one Health hack or life hack that you would share and I the word hack is sort of I get you there I W hold you that one I will say your body is screaming at you all day you have to listen people can often be in places where they have a hard time reading and regulating there's a phenomenal individual I'm lucky to work with em high tower and she has articulated this so well read and regulate this is not calm down this is not lower stress it's none of those things it is simply reading and regulating you don't know what your body is saying so listen to what your body is saying that doesn't mean you're in your feels all the time right this is you going man I feel low energy I can acknowledge that say how's that driving how I'm interacting with the world it is do you have any acknowledge that right are you just going through the thing right um this is positive and negative right so this is like it's almost being able to detach and saying okay I'm looking at now from this outside like I'm not bringing as present as I want to be or like I'm being very present right now that's great it's not just a negative thing and it's not just chill it's not just down there so that to me I think is is a superpower of folks and when they can get a grasp of reading their own physiology then they can regulate it like very quickly right so um you see this manifested in children like so obviously then when you watch adults interact you're like oh you've totally lost that ability to read you like you remember when your kids were younger they are very good at telling you exactly where they're at yeah right like or Screaming it well well that's that's that's the thing right it's just like oh okay adults won't necessarily do that but they'll scream in different ways right whether their Scream might be grabbing their phone and not paying attention right their Scream could be doing any number of different things right yeah um it's how we're coping with our stressors and not in always a positive way yeah and it's not always negative either again it can be like a super positive thing right it could be like man you know what I've noticed when I get really focused this thing happens ah great I wasn't even aware of that that's fantastic I've learned that about myself this is a great thing right I've known the thing that ends up making me have a better workout is this like oh that's interesting I'm reading when I'm seeing this signal so we tend to hear this type of stuff and we always assume the negative side of it yeah but it can be the positive side of it too so um that that's the that's the way I answer it is is better appreciation of reading and regulating

Dr.

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