I had a great conversation with Dr. Lauren Colenso-Semple, PhD, who is a scientist specializing in female physiology and muscles. She is the expert who helped point me in the right direction for my last post debunking the myth that women lose 10% of their muscle mass during menopause.
She was gracious enough to do an Instagram Live with me, and over the span of 45 minutes we talked about many things related to hormones and muscle and bone health, including testosterone, weighted vests, protein, creatine, resistance training, and the myth of timing work outs with the menstrual cycle (and more!). I received such great feedback on Instagram about our chat that I thought I would share it with you here at The Vajenda. Substack tells me the platform will automatically generate a transcript, so here’s hoping! (This is my first video upload, so fingers crossed there are no glitches).
I also thought I would share this great graphic from Dr. Colenso-Semple’s Instagram about post-workout nutrient timing, because I understand there are some people making some bold claims here. Her message is to focus more on adequate protein intake and not the timing.
And while we are on the subject of exercise, check out this amazing profile of Jeannie Rice in Runner’s World. She is 76 years old and just ran a 3:33:27 marathon! I know, right? She doesn’t just dominate in the marathon, she also dominates in her age group in a range of distances from 1,500 m up to the marathon. I know, right?
What is even more amazing is that Ms. Rice has not seen a decline in speed that is typically experienced by runners her age. Apparently she trains with 40 and 50 year olds! Her physiology is so unique, that she was the focus of a recent case report, which reveals she has the highest VO2 Max ever recorded for a woman age 75 or older. I’m not saying this is achievable for all of us, but it is amazing to see a woman dominate in this way at age 76.
It makes me angry that we don’t hear more about women like Jeannie Rice when it comes to healthy aging and instead we are assaulted with information about faux health, people like creepy Bryan Johnson who claims he is biohacking his way to living forever (you know the guy who the news seems to be constantly reporting about his night time erections, blood transfusions from his son, supplements, and whatnot). Johnson claims he isn’t aging by some cherry-picked metric he devised, except of course he absolutely is aging. Apparently, he is involved in some scandal(s) (quelle surprise!) and if you are interested in learning more about that, here is a gift link to the article in the New York Times. But I understand if you don’t want to read it. Everything I have learned about him has been against my will.
But that’s the patriarchy, a 47 year old Peter Pan wannabe who makes wild, unsupported claims about longevity that are a front for a supplement company goes largely unchecked by the press and lands a Netflix special, while we hear very little about an astounding 76 year old woman who is quietly smashing running records and actually contributing to science.
Share this post