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Welcome to Springs and Things, the podcast where two close friends spill the tea on all things Colorado Springs! From culture and community to hidden gems and neighborhood lore, we’ve got it covered. Join us as we sip our coffee (or maybe something stronger) and dive into the stories and secrets that make this city so unique. Whether you're a local or just passing through, our fun, light-hearted, and always entertaining take on the quirks, hot topics, and insider tips will keep you coming back for more. Discover what’s really happening in the Springs—beyond the mountains and parks!
Okay. So this week's episode is a little different. And fellas, real talk, this one's probably not for you. But ladies, this one is for you, especially if you like to exercise here in Colorado Springs. I sat down with Doctor.
Carly Ries:Marissa Bernaauskas, who's an assistant professor of human physiology and nutrition at UCCS, and she dropped a jaw dropping stat, which is that only 6% of exercise science research is done exclusively on women. You heard that right. Only 6%. So whether you're chasing fourteeners or just surviving a Monday walk with your dog, this episode may really speak to you about recovery, training at altitude, fueling, and why even losing your period should not be a badge of honor. So, guys, you can listen to this too.
Carly Ries:You might understand what women go through. Maybe listen to this for a significant other or a gal friend, but this one's really focused on the women here in Colorado Springs. And before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by Vanguard Aesthetics. It is so hot. So so hot.
Carly Ries:Please wear that sunscreen every time you step outside. Hey, everyone. I'm Carly. And I'm Lauren. We're two Colorado Springs locals who love uncovering everything that makes the city special.
Lauren Ferrara:If you're the kind of person who wants to know where to go, what's happening, and
Carly Ries:the stories behind it all, then you're
Lauren Ferrara:in the right place. Welcome to Springs of Things, your insider's path to hidden gems, local flavor, and unexpected moments that make The Springs one of a kind. From secret spots and can't miss events to arts, eats, and those you've gotta hear about at Local Stories.
Carly Ries:We've got you covered.
Lauren Ferrara:So grab your coffee, settle in, and get ready to fall a little more in love
Carly Ries:with Colorado Springs. Let's dive in to Springs and Things. So, Marissa, when I came across your research, I had so many questions for you personally just because I'm kind of the demographic that you guys are doing the research on. And so I came up with these questions with the caveat, I have zero medical or research background. So I think I came up with questions that are relevant.
Carly Ries:But if at any point you're like, oh, Carly, that's cute. That's false information. Please, please tell me. But welcome to the show. Thank you for having me.
Carly Ries:Well, so let's kick things off. Okay. So Colorado Springs is filled with women who run, climb, ski, compete, you name it. Yet only 6% of exercise science research is done exclusively on women, which is mind blowing. So when our athletes follow mainstream training advice or TikTok advice, which I'm sure you can really rise at that one, how much of it is actually built on bodies like theirs?
Marissa Baranauskas:Yeah, thank you for asking that question because I think it kind of surprises people a lot that I talk to, especially women, where it's such a small number. Only 6% of research is done exclusively on women looking at women's issues, so things like menstrual cycle symptoms, perimenopause, post menopause, which unfortunately means that most of the mainstream training advice or the training prescriptions that we get from the governing bodies in sport, like the American College of Sports Medicine, National Strength and Conditioning Association. They're not sex specific. So, that means that we just have general exercise advice, exercise prescription for males and females without really considering the unique needs that both males and females have physiologically, where they tend to adapt differently to different workouts, they tend to recover differently, but right now, where the research is at, where these prescriptions are at, it's not sex specific. So, all the mainstream advice, if you see anything on TikTok or on social media, it's probably not backed up by consensus statements from these governing agencies, unfortunately, because we just don't have the collection of research or the body of knowledge necessary, unfortunately, to support that sex specific training right now.
Marissa Baranauskas:Well, and this
Carly Ries:is so important, I feel like, especially for women in The Springs, because so many women here train hard year round. You have those people that do the incline three hundred and sixty five days a year, sometimes twice a day, or just training for the Olympics or training for whatever. We have a lot of athletes here. So what should a Colorado Springs female athlete understand about how her menstrual cycle phase might be shaping her workouts, energy, and even recovery week to week? So while we don't have the evidence on a group level, so looking at women or females as a whole,
Marissa Baranauskas:to understand how exercise training might need to be more specific to female physiology, I think it's really important for female athletes, premenopausal but also peri and postmenopausal, to understand that their specific physiology is individual. And to really take the extra effort, just like they would monitor other training parameters or recovery parameters like sleep, diet, heart rate, etc, to incorporate things that are specific to their female physiology. So, looking specifically at things like menstrual symptom burden. So, there's different apps available, different questionnaires available, where you can simply just take a tally of different symptoms that other female exercisers may be experiencing around certain times of their menstrual cycle. Just track it over the course of a menstrual cycle, the course of a month, to see kind of what are, are there any patterns in the burden of symptoms that you're experiencing, and can you correlate that with how you're feeling during a key workout or how you're recovering after that workout?
Marissa Baranauskas:Because it's important to know that not every woman is sensitive to those hormonal changes across the menstrual cycle. We've seen, with some of the phenomethylates that we've tested in our lab, some are extremely symptomatic, where they're really sensitive to those hormonal changes. It seems to really negatively impact their performance and recovery on certain phases, whereas others, they could have similar increases or decreases in those hormones, but for whatever reason, they're not as sensitive to those changes. I think just taking it as an individual metric for your performance and recovery and just simply monitoring things like menstrual symptom burden.
Carly Ries:Man, the things women have to think about. But your recent study found that naturally menstruating women had impaired performance a full day after a hard interval session compared to men. So the for the women listening right now doing, let's say, track workouts or trail runs or whatever, how should that change the way she plans her training every week?
Marissa Baranauskas:Yep. For that specific study, we took naturally menstruating premenopausal women, so those who are not taking hormonal contraceptives, and we tested them compared to males who are of a similar age, similar endurance training status, and we tested them in three different times of their menstrual cycle. So, the late luteal, early follicular, so kind of right around, you know, right before or the few days after when bleeding occurs, and then right about mid cycle, where you have a peak in the hormone estrogen and progesterone is relatively low, that's right around the time of ovulation. And then, we tested them a third time, kind of towards the latter half of their cycle, in what's called the mid luteal phase, when the hormone progesterone's elevated and estrogen is secondarily elevated. So, we kind of expected to see differences in their symptom burden, but also their recovery between each one of those phases compared to men, and that's kind of exactly what we saw, where the men seemed to be more stable and, oddly enough, the men were able to come back a second day after the hard interval workout and perform just as well or even better than the day before.
Marissa Baranauskas:Whereas, the female exercisers, kind of depending on where they were at, we noticed in their cycle phase, tended to perform worse, where they had worse recovery, and that seemed to be dependent or have a relationship with their overall symptom burden. Specifically, we found that in that late luteal to early follicular phase, so kind of right before to right after bleeding, women's recovery seemed to be worsened compared to males. And then, kind of mid cycle, it seemed to be more similar, although this wasn't statistically significant, which was kind of something we observed in the data. So, I think, again, just kind of looking at that symptom monitoring and seeing, especially around that time, kind of right before to right after when bleeding starts each month, that might be a time to maybe focus more on recovery. Especially if you have a high symptom burden, like you're feeling more muscle or joint aches and pains, more low back pain, which are common symptoms, just to keep in mind that that's a completely normal hormonal response, and we shouldn't ignore that as women, and that is something different than we might have compared to our male counterparts, and it might be hard if you are training with a group of males or a male training partner to take that extra day of recovery, but other research has shown that, especially during that time, right before to right after bleeding, delayed onset muscle soreness is increased, so there's actually worsened muscle damage and longer repair needed for some of those damaged muscle fibers.
Marissa Baranauskas:So, you're actually hoping you're training long term if you can just kinda take a minute and accept kinda where your body's at, accept that higher symptom burden, and just know that it is a completely normal response to those hormonal fluctuations, and it's not a reflection or a symptom of maybe poor training. It doesn't mean that you need to train harder or train through it. You should just listen to symptoms and that will benefit your training later on. So what you're saying is if my husband wants to go
Carly Ries:for a hike back to back days and
Lauren Ferrara:I don't want to, I
Carly Ries:can use this as an excuse. Absolutely. Okay. So speaking of which, we have women that train at altitude every day. We're above 6,000 feet.
Carly Ries:Weekends, they might be climbing thirteeners, fourteeners, whatever. Drawing on your high altitude research, how does exercising at this altitude affect women's physiology differently than men's? And what should what should our our athletes know? And you kind of alluded to this, but if
Marissa Baranauskas:you could elaborate. Sure. Yeah, there's a lot of things that happen physiologically that I think complicate just our responses, male or female, to exercise when we talk about ascending higher up in altitude. Colorado, I think, yeah, so many of the trail athletes, cyclists, runners are constantly going up, above 6,000 feet, above 10,000 feet, and unfortunately, we don't really know, we don't have a lot of data that's taking a look at how males and females may respond differently to those excursions at high altitude. Because of that lack of knowledge, we are in the middle of doing a study right now, taking a look at how males and female trail runners specifically respond differently to exercise from sea level all the way up to 10,000 feet.
Marissa Baranauskas:Where they're coming in, they're doing a high intensity VO2 max trial at sea level, 10,000 feet in our altitude chamber here, and then they're doing a two kilometer time trial, kind of all out, as hard as they can, and we're looking at different things like their oxygen saturation, different respiratory parameters, etcetera, to try to identify and pinpoint if there is a difference between males and females, what is the reason? And we think that one thing that females should be aware of, or our hypothesis going into the study, is that we know that at sea level, even, when males and females do high intensity exercise close to their VO2 max effort, females tend to desaturate, meaning that they have lower oxygen availability in their bloodstream for the same fitness level, kind of same age, compared to males. So, are more likely to have a lower oxygen saturation and have more difficulty transporting oxygen at those really high intensities, even at sea level. So, we're thinking that that difference is just going to increase in magnitude as the women go up to 10,000 feet, which will further impair their performance. Right now, some write outs suggest that could possibly be true, but we need to test some more individuals.
Marissa Baranauskas:And the reason why researchers think females have this increased difficulty transporting oxygen, keeping oxygen in their bloodstream, even at sea level, is largely due to differences in their respiratory system anatomy. So, for even the same height, same body size, same fitness level, females tend to have about 20 five-thirty percent smaller airways compared to males. So, when you're talking about getting a really large volume of air in, when you have a highly trained athlete who's working at a really high intensity, females are eventually gonna reach the mechanical constraints of their airways a lot sooner than males. So, they need the same amount of volume of air for the same body size to reach those high intensities, but females have more difficulty getting that in. And so, we think that might be the case with high altitude, too.
Marissa Baranauskas:There are some strategies, hopefully, that can help alleviate that problem, though, for a female who maybe has those issues just at sea level or if they notice some breathing difficulties as you're exercising at high altitude, they can do strategies like respiratory muscle training. So there's these breathing devices that you can get on the internet, on Amazon, wherever, where you're essentially just breathing against resistance, so it's kind of like weight training for your breathing muscles. So we can't really, unfortunately, increase the size of our airways. That's kind of set. But we can increase the strength and endurance of our breathing muscles to help maintain a really high ventilation to get more airflow in.
Carly Ries:Okay. So, I have a friend who is an ultra marathon runner, and she obviously trains very hard. And she actually lost her period for a significant amount of time and and was kind of embarrassed by it.
Marissa Baranauskas:And so she didn't really talk about
Carly Ries:a lot. She she confided in me. I'm obviously not gonna say her name on here, but she kind of thought it was just normal if you're training at that level. So what are the early warning signs for people like her and why should our runners and climbers take it seriously beyond just fertility?
Marissa Baranauskas:Yeah, great question. I'm glad you asked that because unfortunately menstrual cycle disorders, specifically things like you mentioned, the loss of a period called clinically amenorrhea, it is a problem that disproportionately affects our female athletes, where it's estimated kind of depending on what sport individuals are involved in. Up to maybe thirty percent or so or even higher of female athletes will experience a loss of a period. Unfortunately, it's not normal to experience that, even though I think I was a college athlete over ten years ago now, and I think at that time, even, it was very taboo to talk about these issues, and it was almost a sign of normalcy, where it was almost celebrated if you lost your period because it was then looked at as less of a problem for training. But, thankfully, we now know, and I think kind of coaching of female athletes has kind of shifted where we acknowledge that that's kind of a warning sign that our body's telling us that we're either overtraining or under fueling, or there might be some other physiological issue going on that is affecting not only our health but also our performance as well.
Marissa Baranauskas:So, the early warning signs, they're often overlooked. So, unfortunately, by the time female athlete loses their menstrual cycle, where they have clinical amenorrhea, which is defined as losing your menstrual cycle for ninety days or greater, for three or more months about, that's looked at as a very serious medical issue where we hope to be able to catch that before an individual loses their menstrual cycle because it is really difficult to get it back. We don't fully understand the best ways to regain menstruation, and sometimes it takes a while, which can affect things like fertility, but also other aspects of health, well. What we're trying to do in our lab is look for different behavioral indicators, so things that active women are doing, like rapidly increasing their exercise volume, changes in dietary habits, that could maybe predict when even these subtle menstrual cycle disorders are happening, so these subtle changes in reproductive hormone before it becomes an issue where they lose their period. So, those are called subtle menstrual cycle disorders.
Marissa Baranauskas:They are more difficult to catch, whereas with amenorrhea, it's fairly obvious where you just, you don't have bleeding. These subtle menstrual cycle disorders, they tend to affect even more exercising women. The estimates are upwards of fifty percent or more, where those include things like anovulation, which means that you don't have an ovulatory peak the hormone luteinizing hormone. That's the hormone that causes the release of the oocyte or egg from your ovaries, kind of in the middle of your cycle, which is tied with fertility, reproductive health. So, a good proportion of active women will have anovulatory cycles where they don't have a sufficient rise in luteinizing hormone.
Marissa Baranauskas:That's also closely related to another menstrual cycle disruption called luteal phase defect, where there's an insufficient rise in the hormone progesterone, which means that there's an insufficient kind of formation of what we call the corpus luteum after ovulation happens, which helps us secrete the hormones progesterone and estrogen, which are tied to things that are related to our health and performance. So, unfortunately, the only way to look for those subtle menstrual cycle disorders is to actually test your hormones. There are devices on the market right now. I was just at the American College of Sports Medicine Conference and went to a session where they were kind of validating some of these more at home monitors, which have just come out on the market about two years ago. So, those are things like the hormone monitor in Nido, which works just for Apple, I believe, now.
Marissa Baranauskas:It kind of hooks up to your iPhone. You just provide urine samples in the morning. Also, we do a lot of work in our lab with Mira, which is another device that works for Apple or Android. The testics are kind of expensive, but if you do feel like this is something you want to monitor long term for reproductive or just general health purposes, it could be worth looking into. We found that they're more accurate than just your over the counter luteinizing hormone testics that you can get at the drugstore or on Amazon.
Marissa Baranauskas:Because when you're an exercising or active female, you don't have the same rise in the hormones as somebody who's more sedentary or less active. So, a lot of those test sticks that you just get over the counter, they have a certain binary threshold. So, a lot of them range from twenty to even 40 mIUs per milliliter of the hormone luteinizing hormone, and that indicates that you've ovulated if you pass that threshold. So, it's usually like you have different lines on the stick that indicate if you ovulated or not or bypass that threshold. What we're finding, unfortunately, our active women is almost like 90 might not meet those thresholds for ovulation.
Marissa Baranauskas:So if we were to just use those over the counter sticks, or if we had a female who was active trying to actively get pregnant, they might miss that window because their hormones are rising in the pattern we'd expect. They are ovulating, but they're not meeting that threshold for those testics. So, they're completely missing ovulation. So, that's why I'm really excited that some of these are coming on the market right now where you can actually look at and catch, not only the luteinizing hormone peak for ovulation or fertility purposes, but also just to monitor your health as a female athlete. So, it's been shown that specifically suppressed levels of the hormone estrogen, which we have in higher quantities when we're premenopausal, kind of before that peri or postmenopausal transition.
Marissa Baranauskas:It's really closely tied to things like bone health. It's tied to vascular health, lowered blood pressure, etcetera. Where we want that hormone to be as elevated as it can be when we're younger, which will help, of course, things for health but also for performance, where you don't want things like stress fractures. So it's important to monitor and it could be kind of a good way to notice if things are changing compared to where you sit normatively before you have a really severe menstrual cycle disruption like amenorrhea.
Carly Ries:All right, let's take a quick break to talk about our wonderful sponsors, starting with Vanguard Aesthetics because, honestly, they are a game changer. If you've been on the fence about getting a little skin refresh, this is the team you want. They're not pushy. They actually listen to your goals, and the whole vibe is just warm and welcoming, not intimidating like some med spas can feel. And, also, we wanna give some love to Core Collective.
Carly Ries:They have been with us since the beginning. They are a reformer Pilates studio in Downtown Colorado Springs, and my body has not been the same since I started going. And I mean that in the absolute best way. It's challenging, and the instructors are so good. Like, they actually cue you through every movement, so you're feeling it all in the right places instead of just guessing.
Carly Ries:And the community there is just awesome too. It's one of those places where you walk in as a stranger and leave feeling like you found your people and you just wanna keep going back. And the greatest thing is if you get to check out when you are booking a class, type in the code Springs and Things, all caps, no spaces, because that'll unlock three classes for just thirty bucks. That's $10 a class, which is crazy and awesome. So be sure to visit their website.
Carly Ries:That link is in our show notes as well. Man, I feel like I am so out of my league talking to you about all of this so much. You just sounded so I mean, this is all so fascinating. I felt like part of me wanted to be listening to you and taking it on, and part of me wanted to, like, jot down notes of, like, ask her this after. Ask her this.
Carly Ries:I just this is just so fascinating. But I wanted to circle back to something you said. You talked about underfueling. And you talked about enduring endurance culture kind of like when you were an athlete even in college. In plain terms, what is low energy availability, and how can a local athlete here in The Springs tell if she's accidentally not eating enough to support her training?
Marissa Baranauskas:Yeah, great question again, and this is something, I think there is a lot of misinformation about what low energy availability is, how we can measure it, but fortunately, it's something that we can measure really readily and I'm really excited to be able to share that with the athletic community here. It's something that we try to provide as a resource to the female athletes that come in to participate for some of our studies because I think it's so important. Yeah, as a college athlete, I dealt with a lot of stress fractures. It was a chronic culture of under fueling and I think that all could have been prevented and my performance could have been improved, I think, back then and it's something that I practice now and monitor regularly as a more kind of ultra endurance trail athlete. So, low energy availability is most simply defined as a formula.
Marissa Baranauskas:So, on the top part of the formula, it's energy intake. So, that's the K cals that you're taking in from your diet in a twenty four hour period. So, it's calories in minus what you're expending only through exercise. So, that's important. It's not total calorie expenditure throughout your whole day.
Marissa Baranauskas:It's just what you're doing on that thirty-, sixty minute runner cycle, for example. That
Lauren Ferrara:can
Marissa Baranauskas:be estimated from just your GPS watch, which is what we do in the lab here. We found it works pretty accurately compared to some of the laboratory methods we have, where you can just use your GPS watch, look at how many kilocalories you're estimated to be expending during that exercise session, and subtract that out from what you're taking in in your diet. Then you can divide that by your kilograms of fat free mass, which is essentially just your muscle tissue and your bone tissue. Those are the kilograms of mass that kind of are what we call metabolically active that need energy to sustain themselves, to repair and recover after exercise. So, in other words, low energy availability, or just energy availability in general, refers to how much energy do we have left over at the end of the day after we exercise to maintain all of our different body functions.
Marissa Baranauskas:So, that could be repair of your muscle and bone after a workout, and that could also mean things like your reproductive health and hormone function, as well. So, with energy availability, an easy way to measure this without having access to lab tools is just taking a dialogue for the energy in. Just using a free dialogue software is fine, minus what you expend through exercise, like with your GPS watch. You can get those estimates to be more accurate if you have a really accurate measure of your heart rate. That's usually what most watches use to kind of estimate calorie expenditure.
Marissa Baranauskas:So, if you're using a wrist based heart rate monitor on your watch, it might not be as accurate. It's really affected by things like temperature. So, if it's really hot, like it is the summer in Colorado, you might consider getting something like an armband or a chest strap, which will be a little bit more accurate than your wristwatch. Then the kilograms of fat free mass is a little bit more difficult to have an accurate estimate on your own without laboratory methods. In the lab here, we use a dual energy x-ray absorpt geometry, or a DEXA machine, which very accurately measures things like bone mass, muscle mass using x rays.
Marissa Baranauskas:If you don't have access to that, which most people don't, you can fairly well estimate it using things like bioelectrical impedance or BIA scale analysis, which most gyms have, some home scales have, or you can do other types of different body scans, as long as you're getting an estimate of your percent body fat, which you can then use to estimate your fat free mass. And then, with low energy availability, that's a really set threshold. So, when you take your energy in minus energy out, divided by kilograms of fat free mass, if that value is below 30 kilocalories per kilogram of fat free mass per day, that's the threshold that is used clinically in the research and defined as low energy availability. So, it's closely tied to things like menstrual cycle disruption, impaired performance, and recovery. What's optimal, however, is quite a bit higher.
Marissa Baranauskas:It's around 45. Trick that I use is I just, especially on those really long run days or long hours where you're exercising for several hours, that kind of, on those days at least, I feel like my appetite's not as high, especially when you push yourself, it might be hot, it might not feel like fueling. I try to use that as a spot check just to make sure during the week that my energy availability is kind of where it needs to be. They've shown that even three days of being in low energy availability can negatively impact your menstrual cycle function and it can negatively impact your performance and recovery later on. That is so wild,
Carly Ries:and I'm so glad you're putting all this into practical day to day terms because people could be like, Well, Marissa, this is your job. You have access to the facility and everything, and it's like, no. You can do this at home and track it at home. So I just from a a regular person out and about, really appreciate that. But I wanna ask you.
Carly Ries:So we do have a lot of competitive women here. Again, we have athletes training. We have just ultra marathon it sounds like you are also an ultra marathon runner. Right? Trail runner.
Carly Ries:But for people for a competitive woman listening right now who's used to pushing through, what's a smarter way to work with her symptoms instead of just ignoring them?
Marissa Baranauskas:Yeah, I think, unfortunately, previously the culture around menstrual cycle health and menstrual symptoms has just been very taboo, and it's something that I've noticed as a female athlete, like, don't really talk about as much. We don't talk about periods. We don't talk about heavy menstrual bleeding. We don't talk about symptoms, but I think if you can talk about those things and just also monitor them yourself. Looking at, again, menstrual symptom burden, just acknowledging that they're happening, I think, is just a big step forward and not ignoring them.
Marissa Baranauskas:I think for a lot of female athletes, think, Oh, you know, I have cramps. M just gonna push through it. Oh, I have muscle pains and aches. I'm just gonna push through it. We should treat that just like any other kind of indicator of training and performance.
Marissa Baranauskas:Again, like heart rate, like session, perceived exertion, like sleep, like diet. And I think just being aware of it and kind of accepting where you're at in your cycle and kind of using that as a metric to optimize your training. So, instead of ignoring it or pushing through it, I think if we can encourage female athletes to work with it, meaning that when you have a really high symptom day, you should back off and focus on recovery. You can even, if you're worried about losing fitness or not optimizing that training time, you can even make that a long, slow endurance day where you're working on something, you're working on your aerobic capacity, working on your endurance, but that might not be a high intensity day. You might save that for a time when you have a lesser symptom burden.
Marissa Baranauskas:I think just working with yourself and kind of giving yourself a peace of mind that it's not you, it's not your training, that's insufficient. This is just kind of a normal fluctuation that's happening.
Carly Ries:So, Marissa, for women that are listening, they're like, gosh. I I would love to be able to just focus on all of this and just focus on tracking, but I also have a demanding job. I have kids. I have to reach these goals. I have so much going on.
Carly Ries:I mean, the average woman carries a heavy load on their shoulders most days. How does that everyday stress actually show up in their cycles and their performance on the trail or the start line or just an everyday activity? Yeah. That is a
Marissa Baranauskas:great point. I feel like just talking with the women, you know, in the community, the other runners, cyclists, and the women who come in here to volunteer for studies, they are balancing so much. We take measures of what's called chronic perceived stress, which is a perceived stress scale, and a lot of times they're off the charts. So, in the community who are runners, cyclists, they are dealing with, I think, abnormally high levels of stress compared to the general community, to balance it all. It can impact menstrual cycle function.
Marissa Baranauskas:We know that there's this relationship between higher stress, and that can be stress from all different causes, and menstrual cycle dysfunction. So, just kind of a lowered level of those reproductive hormones like estrogen and progesterone, maybe some of those subtle menstrual cycle disturbances, and amenorrhea. So, I think stress reduction could be an important part of, if you do notice some of those subtle or more severe menstrual cycle changes, that could be something to work with, whether that's, you know, with therapist, with a coach, or whomever, just kind of lower stress levels.
Carly Ries:Okay. So let me ask you. So a lot of our audience, we try to I mean, we have listeners of all ages, but a lot of our audience are, like, in their mid thirties, early forties, maybe entering perimenopause, but they wanna keep performing at a high level. So how should a Colorado Springs athlete rethink her training and nutrition through these stages so that she can stay strong and keep that peak performance up?
Marissa Baranauskas:Yeah, it's such an important topic because, you know, there's only six percent of research done on active women, and women in general, but there's even less of that six percent done on women who are in the perimenopausal to menopausal stages of life. So, what we do know, however, is that in perimenopause and postmenopause, there's a greater loss in strength and power compared to males of similar age ranges. Specifically, if you look at the decline in what's called Type II or Fast Twitch muscle fibers, so the size of those muscle fibers, how they function, women who are in peri and postmenopause seem to have a greater and earlier decline in those type two or fast twitch muscle fibers, which leads to earlier and more severe declines in overall muscle strength and muscle power. So, it might seem contraindicated, but really during that time, there should be a focus, at least in my opinion, on intensity and also on strength training specifically. So, if you're an endurance athlete, if you're a trial athlete, I think focusing as you're reaching that age of 35 or higher to maybe cut back on some of your longer endurance runs in favor of increasing the intensity of those runs, maybe doing things like high intensity hill repeats, which will challenge you in terms of your muscular development, but then also going to prioritize strength training two or three times a week, and really doing things like high intensity explosive movements.
Marissa Baranauskas:As long as it's safe and you're used to kind of doing those movements or making it a goal to work up to them, that will help at least maintain or preserve or even improve your muscle strength and power throughout the course of aging, which is something that males don't have to focus on as much, unfortunately. Those guys. Okay.
Carly Ries:So if one active Colorado Springs woman is hearing this today, what are the one or two things you'd tell her to start doing right now to support both her performance and her long term hormonal health?
Marissa Baranauskas:I think number one is just evaluating and monitoring energy availability. It doesn't have to be every day, but I think especially in those really hard training blocks, I think if you can monitor it maybe once a week, once every couple weeks, I think that could be a game changer, where you might not be consciously under fueling, but I think just, again, focusing on those longer efforts, those longer session days, I think it'd make a huge impact for women's health, just in terms of performance and recovery, and also injury prevention and hormonal health. And then number two, I think just symptom burden monitoring. So, kind of working with your symptoms, like we mentioned, monitoring the times when you maybe have higher menstrual related symptoms, looking for patterns, and then kind of pairing that with how you monitor your exercise intensity and recovery. So again, working with them and not and not ignoring them.
Marissa Baranauskas:Well, again, Marissa, this
Carly Ries:has all been so, so fascinating. I do wanna I wanna ask you a question that we ask all of our guests, but then I wanna end with where people can learn more and everything. So before we get to that and the call to action where we can drive people, we
Marissa Baranauskas:ask
Carly Ries:all of our guests, what is your Colorado Springs pick of the week this week? What are you loving about The Springs right now?
Marissa Baranauskas:I love so many things about The Springs, but my probably my biggest one right now has been the Arabica Group Runs, which is my new shout out for Monday night. They meet down at Fossil Brewing and go around Red Rocks, it's about 100 runners that show up every Monday, and it's kind of amazing. It's such a great group of people. I moved to The Springs about four years ago and it's where I've met most of my friends, acquaintances in the community. It's just a really great, supportive environment.
Marissa Baranauskas:That sounds amazing.
Carly Ries:I'm a Jack Quinns run person, which I feel like is well known. And obviously, this one is very well known too, but I personally have not heard of this. So that's incredible. Thank you. Adding to my list of things to research.
Carly Ries:But speaking of research, if people wanna learn more about your studies or just more about this facility or anything, where do they find all of
Marissa Baranauskas:that information? Sure. So, yeah, I'm available directly via email if you do want to get in contact about any potential studies that we have going on or just learning more. If you have specific questions, I'm always happy to answer those from the community. But my email at UCCS is Mbaranauuccs dot edu.
Marissa Baranauskas:And then we also have our laboratory website, which is 6percentperformance,allspelledout,.com. Well, this has been
Carly Ries:so great. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate you sharing your insights. I think this is such valuable information for a lot of women in our audience. So this has been great.
Carly Ries:Thank you. Thank you, Carly. And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, please leave that five story review. It helps us spread the word to other locals in Colorado Springs, especially women needing to hear this information.
Carly Ries:Share this episode with a friend that that you might that might find it helpful, and subscribe on Apple or Spotify, and we'll see you next week on Springs and Things.